


My Brother's Widow

by alexjanna91



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hinted Future Relationship, Jessica Moore Lives, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Major Character Injury, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27139280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexjanna91/pseuds/alexjanna91
Summary: After her husband, Sam, is brutally murdered, Jessica struggles with just getting out of bed in the morning. When a mysterious stranger knocks on her door, he makes her question everything she knew about her husband, but he also gives her hope that maybe Sam didn’t leave her all alone in the world after all.
Relationships: Jessica Moore & Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 24
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A world where Dean went to Stanford, but never broke into Sam's apartment and dragged him away for the weekend.

Sam Winchester is murdered on a Thursday. 

He was working late at his law firm. Pro-bono cases deserved the same amount of attention and effort as the million dollar clients, in Sam’s opinion. Single mothers with greedy slumlords, juvenile offenders with bad attitudes and worse circumstances, the occasional workplace compensation; it didn’t matter who it was, Sam worked just as hard for them as he did for the law firm’s paying clients. 

So it was that Jessica Moore Winchester wasn’t expecting her husband of seven years to come home until late in the evening. Dinner had long since passed and Jessica had curled into bed with a medical journal she’d been meaning to read for weeks now. The medical clinic where she works as a nurse keeps her nearly as busy as Sam’s clients do him and she was ready for some time to relax. She didn’t even really start to worry about Sam until the clock was ticking past 12:59am and into one o’clock. 

They didn’t find Sam’s body, cold and bloody and torn apart in a dark garbage strewn alley, until 11:47 the next morning. 

Three days and four more bodies later, cause of death was declared animal attack. The police released advisories to watch out for wild dogs and once the paperwork was finished, “Ts” crossed and “Is” dotted, the case was closed and the victims’ bodies were released to their families. 

A week and a half after Sam was killed Jessica began to plan his funeral.

*

The funeral home was filled with flowers and people. The flowers were generic and the people were generic. Jessica didn’t really see either one. The only time she wasn’t just floating numbly in her mind was when her family tried to talk to her. Over the past two weeks she’d perfected the art of the “smile and nod”. Her smile may have been brittle and her nods may have been jerky, but they were just acceptable enough that her family could justify leaving her to herself. 

She couldn’t really bring herself to care about anything beyond her own grief. The fleeting moments when she forgot Sam wasn’t standing next to her and she turned to comment on someone’s social faux pas or inappropriate funeral attire made it all that much more painful. 

The funeral director had guided her through the processes of “putting a loved one to rest”, metaphorically holding her hand through the entire thing, turning her attention to the preferred format for prayer cards, the preferred bible passages the nondenominational Christian reverend would read out during his sermon, (Sam was agnostic. Jessica didn’t bother interrupting the director’s spiel to tell him that), the preferred procedure when the deceased requested to be cremated. 

Cremated. Sam wanted to be cremated. Jessica hadn’t known that until their lawyer contacted her about his will. That hadn’t been the most surprising of Sam’s last requests. While he was sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee at his elbow, a pile of legal documents spread out between them, the lawyer did a marvelous job of keeping his expression blank as he explained it. Sam wanted to be cremated and he wanted his body to be covered in salt. 

Jessica hadn’t been able to process the fact that she hadn’t known Sam had their lawyer draw up a will separate from their joint will, much less the incomprehensible request for salt. 

The funeral director had been happy to accommodate such a _unique_ request, of course, for a fee. 

The large framed picture of a smiling Sam was the only thing in the room Jessica didn’t see through a haze. She couldn’t even remember when the picture had been taken, but Sam was smiling and happy and she just wanted to collapse and curl up in a ball and cry. Her mother was on one side of her and her father was on the other and she was wearing a black dress and black shoes and standing in front of their friends and family and colleagues and she wasn’t allowed to break down in public. No matter how much she wanted to. 

Apparently it was uncomfortable for the rest of the mourners if the widow expressed her immeasurable grief more than the one perfect tear that rolled down her cheek. 

The service was over (Sam wouldn’t have liked it) and the mourners lined up to express their sympathies. She took the handshakes and the awkward hugs and the air kisses with a bland smile and unseeing eyes. It was a relief when the solicitous funeral director demanded her attention for something or other that she wasn’t paying attention to. 

That’s when he caught her eye. 

He stood apart from the other faceless mourners. With his weathered leather jacket, his faded blue jeans, and his heavy work boots he wasn’t dressed for anything even mildly formal, much less a funeral. His clothes weren’t what held her attention, though, what cleared the haze and brought the world back into focus. It was his expression. 

Painfully neutral, his face was the picture of stoicism. It was completely free of emotion, like he was just standing and watching the world around him without noticing a single detail. 

Jessica was staring at him so intently that it was a jolt when his gaze flicked toward her and their eyes met for a split second. His eyes were anything, but emotionless.

“Mrs. Winchester?”

Jessica snapped her attention back to the funeral director watching her with a gratingly sympathetic expression. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Are you ready to leave for the wake?”

She knows she said something in the affirmative, but she stopped listening when she looked back and saw that the man in the leather jacket had disappeared.

*

Her house was filled with people and Jessica wanted nothing more than to kick them all out. There was food piled two trays high and people milling about talking in hushed voices that didn’t conceal the fact that they were all gossiping about Sam. People love nothing more than sensationalism and your husband being brutally killed by a wild animal in the middle of the city was certainly sensational. 

Jessica was tempted to grab the closest sharp pointy object and start stabbing people every time they hushed up when she got near. Not enough to really hurt them, just, you know, startle them a little. Maybe make them bleed a bit. Like a paper cut, except with a letter opener. 

Blowing out a deep breath, Jessica shook her head to clear her thoughts. Truly, if her mother knew what she was thinking she would be scandalized. Sam would have thought it was funny. 

Her breath hitched abruptly and she immediately turned to some faceless mourner for a distraction. 

Apart from her coping strategies of mildly violent fantasies, the only other thing keeping Jessica from totally losing it was the compulsion to look for the man in the leather jacket. There was something about him, she couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was nagging at her. She didn’t know him from Adam. He wasn’t a colleague of Sam’s or a friend. Sam didn’t have any family, that he talked to at least, and he wasn’t anyone that Jessica knew from her work or social life. 

He was a mystery that she latched onto to avoid thinking about the Sam shaped whole in her home, in her life, in her heart. She was one insincere condolence away from just saying, “Screw it,” and disappearing into her room to cry until she passed out. The urge to look toward the door every time it opened kept her occupied enough to keep smile-and-nodding. 

When the wake was over and her mother and father were packaging up all of the sympathy food to shove in the fridge, Jessica lost the distraction of putting on a public face and watching for the mystery man. She walked down the hall into her bedroom, locked the door, and shed her mourning clothes like they were on fire.

Hair free, make-up smudged, and wearing nothing, but panties and one of Sam’s t-shirts that still smelled like him, Jessica curled up in her bed and let herself cry until she couldn’t cry anymore. 

*  
TBC…


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her husband, Sam, is brutally murdered, Jessica struggles with just getting out of bed in the morning. When a mysterious stranger knocks on her door, he makes her question everything she knew about her husband, but he also gives her hope that maybe Sam didn’t leave her all alone in the world after all.

It’s been one week since Dean’s little brother was mourned and burned. It’s been two since his body was found in a dirty, garbage filled alley torn apart and missing his heart. It’s been ten years since Dean had spoken to Sam face to face and fourteen years since Sam had renounced hunting, their father, and everything associated with either one; including Dean. 

Dean had felt like his heart had been ripped out when he’d scanned through the Californian obituaries from a motel room in Oklahoma and found Sam Winchester’s name big and bold and dead. _Winchester, along with three others, was tragically killed by a wild animal attack in the middle of downtown._

Three days, a thousand miles, and thirty-six hours of no sleep later Dean was standing in a nondenominational funeral home listening to bland meaningless prayers, bland meaningless eulogies, and bland meaningless grief from people that hadn’t grown up with and practically raised Sam from the night their mother had died. 

He was almost completely numb with sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and that gaping pit of grief that he was studiously ignoring until he could kill the thing that killed his brother. 

It was so hard though. So hard to nurture that pit of burning rage and need for vengeance when it felt like his heart had been ripped out of his chest, too. He still wore the brass bull’s head charm around his neck and it was burning a hole in his sternum. He felt empty inside. 

The only thing distracting him from giving up on holding it together was watching Sam’s widow. Her cheeks were dry of tears, her makeup was undisturbed, her hair was sensible, and her dress was wrinkle free; her mask was perfect. If Dean hadn’t known what utter despair felt like he wouldn’t have been able to see the hopelessness in her eyes. But he did see. He saw through her façade and for a fleeting moment he was grateful. 

Sam had been loved. Her gray-blue eyes were a reflection of Dean’s own grief. It made the lingering ache of Sam’s decades long desertion a little bit more bearable. He’d found the normal life he’d so craved and it was a fleeting comfort to Dean. 

When the service was over, Dean lingered on the fringes still watching Sam’s widow. She was beautiful and Dean allowed himself to feel proud of his little brother’s choice of wife. When she turned and their eyes met, when they made a tenuous connection across a sea of sorrow, Dean silently vowed to look after her. Besides killing the thing that killed Sam, Dean owed it to his little brother to look after the thing he loved most in the world: 

Jessica Moore Winchester.

*

An FBI badge and a cheap suit got Dean a conversation with the investigating detective on Sam’s case and a copy of the autopsy report. The ME was thorough and competent and the photos were informative. Dean threw up three times after reading it. 

He knew what had killed his brother and he knew how to kill it and he knew he had over a week before he could get a shot at it. The full moon wasn’t for nine more days and Dean had that much time to waste. He spent it stalking Sam’s wife. Sam’s widow. 

Jessica Moore- Jessica Winchester was a beautiful woman. Even with a palled grieving complection and red tear stained eyes. Stationed across the street, Dean watched a steady stream of friends and family traipse in and out of her house. Not a single sympathetic look or word seemed to comfort her any. Dean could sympathize. 

Bobby had called him once a day presumable for an update on the case. Dean knew it was to make sure he hadn’t eaten his own gun yet. He didn’t intend to. At least not until the thing that killed his brother was dead. 

Dean hadn’t made up his mind on whether or not he’d bite the bullet after that. He had nine days to decide so he wasn’t going to think too hard on it yet. 

Jessica Winchester was home every day. Dean assumed she’d taken time off work so he had ample time to just observe her. Three days straight sitting in the Impala without sleep to be exact. She wandered her house drinking coffee, eating sympathy leftovers, and trying and failing to find things to do to occupy her time. To take her mind off the fact that the man she’d loved was nothing, but ash sitting in an urn on her mantel. 

Dean had watched her take the tasteful dead person vase out of its tasteful box and slide it on the mantel above the fireplace right between their wedding photo and a selfie from their vacation in Peru. It seemed like an overly morbid and masochistic tradition to keep the dust of your dead in your living room, but then again Dean had never understood people much less people that lived in the ’burbs. 

He sat in his car for three days watching her be miserable, as miserable as he was. She got up every morning dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, put her blond wavy hair in a messy ponytail, and drank fresh brewed coffee like it was water. 

He sat in his car for three day watching her be miserable. He hadn’t changed his clothes or taken a shower or eaten anything more substantial than convenience store sandwich and crappy convenience store coffee. 

On the morning of the fourth day, Dean watched Jessica get up, get dressed, put her hair up without brushing it and drink her first of many cup of coffee. Then he started the car for the first time since he’d parked there and drove back to his motel. 

Two hours later he parked back in front of his brother’s house showered and dressed in a cheap suit with his hair combed to the side. 

Dean watched the house, watched through the kitchen window as Jessica washed the minimal amount of dishes she’d accrued in the last three days with a sad unsmiling face. After twenty minutes of procrastinating, he finally convinced himself to get out of the car. 

He paused one last time before he was able to cross the street. He allowed himself a moment to smooth down his tie, to pat at the pocket in his jacket where his fake badge was sitting, to run a shaking hand over his hair. The last time he’d been this close to Jessica Moore – _Winchester_ \- was from across the quad at Stanford ten years ago. 

He hadn’t wanted to talk to her then either. 

Before he knew it he was crossing the street and walking up the steps to her front door feeling like his heart was pounding, a continuous throb of pain echoing in his chest. Dean took a deep breath slapped his FBI face on and forced himself to act like this was just another interview; necessary for the hunt and completely meaningless to him personally. 

What a fucking lie. Then again Dean’s always been good at lying to himself. 

The doorbell was glowing and warm under his thumb and the chime rang pleasantly through the house. The dichotomy of happy bells in a house that mourns was not lost on him. 

There was a long moment where Dean listened almost reluctantly to the sound of the water in the kitchen being shut off and the muffled clink of a porcelain being set down on a hard surface. The sound of Jessicaica’s soft footsteps over a hardwood floor was gentle and oddly soothing in comparison. Dean took another deep steadying breath in the quick moment before the door opened and felt some of his inner turmoil quiet. 

The sound of the tumblers on the deadbolt unlocking sent a flutter of approval through him. It wouldn’t be very much protection in the scheme of things, but he could appreciate the vigilance just the same. 

When the door swung inward and Jessica was revealed, Dean observed that she looked worse up close. Her skin was almost sickly pale, gray, her blood shot eyes looked gritty and dry. Her blond hair was darkened with grease. Her t-shirt was wet across her belly from leaning against the sink and stained with a small splotch of yellow over one breast, probably mustard halfheartedly wiped away, the remnants left to dry stiff on the cotton. 

Her jeans here the kind of baggy and soft you only got from wearing them for days, a new hole had been torn in the right knee and was already frying from being worried with twitchy fingers. Dean distantly noticed that she wasn’t even wearing a bra, but unlike every other time he’d seen a good looking woman free-boobing it, he didn’t feel even a hint of arousal. 

She was a picture of despair, reflecting exactly how he felt. A split second of looking her up and down, Dean noted that the only brightness about her was the bright red of her painted toenails. Even then they looked a little ragged the paint chipped and dulled. 

While he’d been taking in all of her newly widowed glory, she’d been taking in all his costumed glory. 

Jessica looked at the man standing on her welcome mat. His suit was off the rack, his tie knot was uneven, his hair was haphazardly gelled down, and he’d missed a spot on his jaw shaving. He was handsome and built and held himself straight, shoulders back and feet hips wide apart. His lips were full, his face was chiseled and his eyes were bright green. 

She recognized him immediately. He’d been standing on the fringes of her husband’s funeral with such a look of grief on his face that it was like looking in a mirror. 

Jessica met his equally assessing gaze and asked, “Can I help you?”

It was like watching the flip of a switch. His stance shifted, his expression set, and her mind suddenly reminded her of the marathon of CSI: Miami she’d spent the last seven hours staring at blankly. 

“Mrs. Winchester, I’m Agent Lugosi with the FBI. I would like to ask you a few questions about your late husband’s death.” He pulled a leather fold from his inner jacket pocket and flashed her a picture ID. Jessica knew next to nothing about spotting a fake ID from a real one, but it seemed legit enough and she really wasn’t in the mood to care more than that. 

Regardless of her ennui, however, she knew Sam would have kicked her ass if she didn’t at least put up the façade. 

“What is this about, Agent?” she asked. “My husband was killed by a wild animal. I didn’t think the FBI would be concerned with rabid wild life.”

His express didn’t waver for even a second as he answered. “We generally wouldn’t be, ma’am, but one of the victim’s family members demanded an investigation and we are obligated to follow up on all requests such as this.” 

It sounded plausible enough and he was sincere enough while delivering his rote response that Jessica didn’t really see a reason to protest. If this just happened to be the only time in three days that she’d actually been able to focus on anything clearly, well she thought she deserved a break from the exhausting haze of just going through the motions.

She stepped back into her foyer and held the door open wider. “Come in, Agent.”

The heavy sound of his footsteps on her wood floor broke up the stale silence that had been pervading her home. He moved further into the house and Jessica kept her eyes on him as she closed and locked the door. 

Agent Lugosi looked around her entranceway as she imagined he would look around a crime scene. His keen green eyes seemed to take in every detail, but they lingered on the bits of personality scattered around. The catch all table pressed flush to the wall covered with her cluttered keychain, loose change, receipts, a messy pile of mail, and ignored sympathy cards. He studied the pictures hanging on the wall like they were mysterious foreign objects. Although, her and Sam’s smiling faces in front of the Trevi Fountain, the Grand Canyon, and Buckingham Palace, seemed to wipe any hint of expression from his face. 

“Would you like some coffee? I have a fresh pot in the kitchen,” she offered. Her curiosity momentarily satisfied and whet at the same time. 

“Thanks.” He nodded and turned to follow her off to the side into her newly scrubbed kitchen. All she’d had to do besides tune out well-wishers and watch terrible tv was clean. She hated cleaning. 

Jessica moved to the cabinets to the left of her sink above the coffee maker and waved halfheartedly at the kitchen table. “Please, sit.” 

Agent Lugosi ran his gaze over her kitchen with the same attention to detail as he had the entryway. Jessica busied herself with pulling down two of the mugs Sam seemed to collect like baseball cards on every trip they’d taken; one from Australia and one from Italy. She glanced at him over her shoulder as she pulled the sugar and powdered hazelnut creamer from their coffee accessory cabinet. Like in his previous examination the bits of personality caught his eye, but this time his gaze seemed to get stuck on a few specific things. 

A frown wrinkled her brow when she realized he was staring at the blue glass eye hanging over the kitchen doorway. 

“We bought that in Cypress on our cruise of the Mediterranean,” she told him as she set his filled coffee mug in front of him and lined up the sugar, creamer, and two spoons in the middle of the table between them. She sat down across from him and grabbed the creamer. “The stall owner said it was supposed to protect against the evil eye.” 

Something flashed through his eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched. “I hear they’re pretty effective.”

Jessica was surprised to find herself mirroring his dry expression. “Well, we haven’t had a problem so far, so I guess it works.” 

There was a pause in their idle conversation while they both doctored their coffees. Well, she said they; Agent Lugosi just waited patiently while she added sugar to her light colored coffee and stirred it sufficiently. Apparently he liked his black.

She looked up from her satisfactory concoction and met his gaze. “You said you had questions about my husband’s death.” 

“Yes.” He cleared his throat, his mug clinking when the ring his right ring finger taped against the ceramic. “I’m sorry to have to disturb you, but the bureau likes a thorough investigation.” 

Suddenly, Jessica felt her patience waning. Her curiosity was fading and the urge to get back to her numb haze of grief was reasserting itself. 

“Just ask your questions, Agent.” She drummed her fingers impatiently against her own mug. “I have things I need to get back to.” 

They both knew she was lying, but he obliged her anyway.

“Was your husband acting in anyway abnormal in the days before his death?” he began. “Did he mention anything out of the ordinary that you can remember?”

“No. Sam was in the middle of case and it was normal for him to stay later at the office,” she responded, taking a sip of her coffee to cover up the unwanted quiver of her lips. At least her voice remained steady. “As far as I could tell everything was normal.” 

He nodded and moved on. “Had either of you been aware of the previous deaths the month before? Did you hear about them on the news or read about them in the newspaper?” 

That, at least, she could answer. “I don’t pay attention to the news, but Sam read the paper every morning. I would assume that he would have read about them.”

Agent Lugosi didn’t seem happy with that response. His brow wrinkled in a frown and his lips thinned, but he smoothed his expressed pretty quickly. If Jessica hadn’t been so interested in observing him and the real reason he was sitting in her kitchen interrupting her mourning, she wouldn’t have noticed the crack in his mask of professionalism. 

He took a breath and asked, “Could you tell me why you had your husband cremated? Was there a specific reason or was it just a preference?”

Jessica scowled, her back stiffening. “I don’t see how that’s relevant, Agent Lugosi.”

“I apologize, Mrs. Winchester, but I have to conduct a thorough investigation,” he returned, the response rehearsed and the placating apology insincere. 

She decided she was done with this farce and wanted him gone. She wanted to go back to her numbness and her self-absorbed grief. But the look in his eyes was hard and unrelenting and it was obvious that he wasn’t going to leave until she answered him. This question was important, the ones before were just for appearance sake, but this one meant something. 

Jessica did and didn’t want to find out why. 

“It was in his will. Sam specified that his body was to be covered in salt and then cremated,” she told him scowling angrily. “Does that answer your question, Agent?”

Agent Lugosi’s expression was complicated and unreadable before he struggled to wipe his expression clean again. He didn’t do as good a job as before and Jessica was confused when she realized that some previously unnoticed tension had drained from his shoulders. The air of stiff professionalism and determined emotional distance around him had thinned and Jessica was reluctantly curious again. 

“Yes, that answers my question.” He stood from his seat leaving his untouched coffee on the table still placed exactly where Jessica had set it. “Thank you for your time and once again I apologize for disturbing you.”

He was halfway to the front door before Jessica could get out of her seat to follow him. He didn’t seem to want to wait for her to see him out, like he couldn’t spare a minute for politeness’ sake, like he couldn’t get out fast enough. 

Jessica made it into the foyer just as Agent Lugosi closed his hand around the doorknob. 

“Agent Lugosi?” She was confused by his reaction and couldn’t stop herself from calling to him. 

He paused with his back still turned, his fist visibly tightened around the knob. There was a long moment of stillness between them then he slowly glanced over his shoulder at her. 

Jessica’s throat tightened painfully at the look in his eyes. It was the same look she’d seen at the funeral. His green eyes reflected such grief and pain that Jessica felt like she was looking in a mirror. It was a perfect copy of the despair inside her. 

“I am truly sorry for your loss,” he murmured lowly then was out the door and down the front steps before she could move again. 

She went to watch him through the front window as an aching in her heart started up again. He stalked down her front walk as fast he could without actually running and crossed the street in long strides. He didn’t stop until he could wrap a hand around the door handle of a classic beast of a car. It was shining jet black in the sunlight even under a layer of dirt. It was familiar. 

It’d been parked outside her house for the last three days and she’d noticed it. 

His shoulders slumped and he ran a jerky hand through his hair then he yanked the door open slid into the driver’s seat, slammed it closed, and the engine stared with a deep rumbling growl. Jessica didn’t look away from the window until Agent Lugosi had disappeared around the corner. 

*

The police report said they found a silver switch blade engraved with SW at the scene. The blood on the blade tested positive for animal DNA, some species of canine. Dean took little comfort in the knowledge that Sam had fought back. Fourteen years rusty armed only with a silver pig sticker, Sam didn’t stand much of a chance. 

Dean had given that knife to Sam on his seventeenth birthday. He’d almost gotten his head bashed in trying to hustle enough cash pool to pay extra for the engraved initials. If he’d thought about it too hard, Dean would have admitted that he’d assumed the knife had been discarded along with every other vestige of Sam’s old life. 

Knowing that Sam had kept at least that reminder of Dean didn’t do anything, but add a layer of nostalgia to his grief. 

It’s been nine days since Sam had been burned, his ashes consigned to a fancy pot on his wife’s mantel, and Dean was crouched on a roof in downtown with a view of most of the neighborhood. He was armed with silver bullets, silver knives, and a burning need for vengeance. His binoculars were military surplus night vision, and he had the patience of a saint. He would sit there in the dark of night as long as it took to find the thing that killed his brother. 

Fortunately for him, he didn’t have to wait long. 

Three hours after sun down the full moon was high and Dean almost didn’t need the night vision. A short howl -could have been a dog, could have been a coyote, could have been a wolf- echoed off the brick buildings along the street. A block away in a dark alley behind a restaurant trashcans were knocked over and a dumpster was slammed into -could have been a cat or rat or raccoon. Probably was a werewolf. 

Dean had been hunting almost since before he could read. It was second nature to ghost soundlessly down the fire escape and melt into the darkness as he moved toward his target. 

His pearl handled colt was held steady in his hands, his eyes and ears were alert for movement. He didn’t want it to get the jump on him, he didn’t want it to get away, he didn’t want it to bite him. He wanted that fucker dead and there was no way he was going to see the sunrise without its body cooling on the ground at his feet. 

There was more clattering, some scuffling along asphalt and concrete, a low growl that shouldn’t be able to come out of a human throat. Well, it wasn’t human anymore. 

Dean took a step around the corner into the alley and his boot heel crunched a piece of glass. The sound seemed to echo off the walls and all sounds of the night just stopped. Even the skittering of roaches had silenced. 

A rookie mistake, Dean cursed himself. His emotions were too high, this job was too personal and he let it cloud his training. The werewolf knew he was coming now and shit was about to get real. 

He got an aborted growl as a warning before the werewolf dropped down on him from somewhere above. His mind blanked and his instincts took over. Absorbing the impact he rolled with the forced and came up in a crouch gun still steady in his hand. The wolf rolled too and Dean had the blink of an eye to pull the trigger twice then it was on him again. 

It had once been a man. Middle aged, just starting to bald, average height, average paunch, average coloring. Now its eyes were yellow and reflected light like an animals, it had claws, and fur sprouted across its brow and cheek bones. Its teeth were pointed sharp fangs and it dripped saliva like a rabid dog. 

It slammed into him like a linebacker and Dean used its momentum to flip it. Twisting in the air like a cat the werewolf landed in an awkward crouch, its humanoid limbs not designed to move like that. It gave an angry bark and charged again. Dean had to drop his gun and unsheathe one of his knives. His colt was more of a detriment in close quarters like this and he needed this fucker dead more than he need its teeth at his throat. 

The fight was brutal. The werewolf wasn’t new. It had been around for a while, hard to say how long, but long enough that the man inside him knew what he was, long enough to learn a modicum of control as an animal. Dean held a detached sort of sympathy for the poor shmucks that didn’t know what they were, but the assholes that knew and began to revel in the kill made his blood boil.

Dean let out a grunt when its claws caught him across the belly, but he pushed the pain down. Grabbing onto its arm he pulled the monster into his knife. The werewolf howled as the silver punctured its side and burned its skin. It scrambled away from him, confused that it wasn’t healing from this injury. 

Yeah, it had been around a while, but not long enough to know its own weaknesses. And that was a weakness in itself.

Taking advantage of the werewolf’s momentary retreat, Dean lunged toward his discarded gun sliding painfully on his belly along loose asphalt and broken glass. His hand wrapped around the pearl grip and he flipped onto his back in a breath. The wolf had rallied and tensed to spring, but Dean sighted and pulled the trigger first. Double tap to the heart. 

It dropped to the ground with a dull thud and the night fell silent. 

Dean’s blood was rushing in his ears, his heart was pounding, and he allowed himself a moment to catch his breath. But only a moment.

The pain from his injuries was numbed by adrenaline and he was able to get to his feet smoothly. In two long steps he was standing over the body of the monster that had torn apart his brother. He aimed his gun and double tapped it in the head. 

*

Jessica allowed herself one more day of paralyzing grief then she decided to get back to her life. She took a shower, she put on fresh clothes, and she threw out all the sympathy food cluttering her fridge. She called in to the medical practice where she worked as a nurse and got back on the roster for work. 

The next day she was dressed in her light pink Hello Kitty scrubs and walking into work. The office manager put her on light duty, manning the front desk, organizing patient files, but Jessica wasn’t going to complain. Truthfully even though she was ready to restart her life, she wasn’t sure she could summon the patience to see patients yet. 

Her first day back had been monotonous, uneventful, and surprisingly grueling. She picked up takeout on the way home, ate it in front of three episodes of _Bones_ then took a shower and collapsed into bed in one of Sam’s soft worn Stanford t-shirts. The next morning she got up with her alarm, dressed in baby blue Candyland scrubs and went to work. She got takeout on the way home, ate it in front of four episodes of _How It’s Made_ , took a shower and went to bed. 

On the third day of the rest of her life, she ordered pizza, changed out of her tie-dye scrubs, and dug through the catchall hall closet until she found the tattered water stained cardboard box Sam had carted from apartment to apartment to house. She dragged it into the living room, tipped the pizza boy generously, and stared at the box through dinner and two episodes of _Rehab Addict_.

After an hour and a half of failing to distract herself, Jessica figured she’d procrastinated enough and put her leftovers up. She diligently ignored the fact that she’d ordered enough pizza for two people plus Sam’s hollow leg and didn’t cry as she shoved two pie plates worth of pizza into the fridge. 

The flower printed living room area rug -a compromise for Sam’s massive flat screen tv- was the only barrier between Jessica’s butt and the cold wood floor. Sam’s cardboard box loomed ominously before her. Her hands shook as she lifted the lid and set it aside with exaggerated gentleness. 

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting as she peered into the box, but a closed shoe box, a pile of random trinkets, and a collection of knives hadn’t been it. It was safest, she decided, to start with the trinkets, because there’s something universal in secondary uses for old shoe boxes and she wasn’t ready to look at pictures of Sam’s life before her, yet. 

Pulling out the shoe box and putting it the side she delicately began pawing through the things at the bottom of the box. Jessica thought maybe she should have started with the pictures after all. She was at an utter loss as to how to interpret what she was looking at.

She pulled out a battered authentic handmade dreamcatcher and a leather pouch with an arcane symbol stitched on the front with dirt and dried plants and quartzes stones inside. Setting those aside she found an expensive zippo lighter with a pentagram carved into the side. Flicking it open she was surprised to find that it still had fuel enough to light a flame. 

She discovered a thin leather bracelet, a stack of blank postcards from around the country, a bus ticket from Colorado to Palo Alto, and his Stanford acceptance letter. 

It was all piled up on the box lid and only the shoebox and the knives were left. She gathered up the knives still leaving the shoebox for last. 

Perhaps the most confusing and worrying and just plain shocking was the sheer assortment of knives. Butterfly knives, pocket knives, switch blades, a bowie knife, some kind of curved serrated blade the likes of which she’d never seen before, and a collection of custom made knives wrapped up in a leather pouch. 

Unraveling the pouch, Jessica barely registered that her hands had started shaking again and her breath was coming faster with her growing incomprehension. She didn’t know much about heavy metals, but she was pretty sure some of the knives in the pouch were sterling silver, some were solid iron, a couple were copper, and some were just regular stainless steel. 

Why? She tried to breathe around the hitch in her throat. Why did Sam have all this stuff? Why was there a new age voodoo looking pouch with rocks and dirt in Sam’s box? Why was there a lighter with a satanic symbol messily carved on the side? Why were there enough knives to make a slasher film just tossed into a mundane cardboard box?

Why hadn’t she known about any of this?

Jessica curled forward and pressed her forehead hard into her knees. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to cry.

She had loved Sam since their fifth date when he wrinkled his nose at her pistachio flavored ice cream. She had lived with him for eleven years and been married for eight. She had given him her entire heart, shared all of her secrets, had looked forward to spending the rest of her life with him and Sam had kept a box of crazy stuff from his past hidden behind their Christmas ornaments and cleaning supplies. 

Her heart was suddenly aching with something other than grief. It tasted a little like betrayal, but she violently shoved it away before the bitterness could linger on her tongue. Maybe she didn’t really have the right to feel betrayed, because she’d known Sam was estranged from his family and after the first couple of times of trying to ask him about it she’d given up. Sam had been great at deflection and downright stonewalling. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it and she hadn’t pushed enough to wear him down. 

Now she was wondering if the reason why Sam hadn’t wanted to talk about his family was because they’d been in a cult, or had worshiped demons, or, hell, been traveling gypsy criminals or something. 

Okay, she told herself taking a deep shuddering breath trying to calm down. There was no use jumping to conclusions. All this stuff could be something or it could be nothing. Sam wasn’t around to ask, so she was going to have to either keep digging or shove it all back in the box and back in the closet and forget about it. 

Sitting up she dropped the knives on top of the other stuff from the box and dragged the shoebox out and into the light. 

She didn’t dilly dally this time and just yanked the lid off to look inside. 

Pictures. Jessica stared down at them and felt a quick rush of relief. There were just pictures inside. 

Surprisingly her hands were rock steady as she slid the first one out of the stack. It was battered, the corners were bent and fraying, and it was familiar. Sam used to have this picture in a cheap frame propped up on their bookshelf in their Stanford apartment. She hadn’t even noticed it had disappeared until she was staring at it again in the soft light of her living room. 

A beautiful blond woman and a handsome dark haired man were standing in front of a two story house wrapped in each other’s arms and smiling at the camera. Jessica could see the love between them and knew who they were before she turned the photo over to read the names. 

_Mary + John ’78_

Sam’s parents. 

She set it gently aside and looked at the next one. Mary was heavily pregnant sitting in a rocking chair and glowing with happiness. _Mary + Baby ’79_

Mary tired in a hospital bed, John sitting next to her and a baby wrapped in a blue blanket between them. _John, Mary + Baby Dean 1-24-1979_. A chubby toothless baby staring wide eyed at the camera, _Dean 3 mths_. A blond diapered toddler screeching gleefully and running around a grassy yard, _Dean ’81_. _John + Dean ’80 First Birthday._ _Dean ’83 First Day of Preschool_. _Mary, Dean + Baby ’83._

“Sam,” Jessica whispered and stared enraptured at the photo. Mary was reclined on a hideous late ’70s couch with four year old Dean pressing his ear to her large round belly. It was beautiful and Jessica pressed a hand to her mouth to keep a sob inside. She swallowed thickly when she was sure she wasn’t going to break down crying and set that photo aside apart from the rest. She wasn’t ready to cover it up just yet. 

The next one was predictably another photo of a tired joyful Mary in a hospital bed sandwiched between a curious four year old Dean and a proud John. A baby in a blue blanket held securely in her arms. _John, Mary, Dean + Baby Sam 5-2-1983._

This time she didn’t bother trying to stop the sob that escaped her sadly smiling lips, or the lone tear that slipped down her cheek. She allowed herself a long bittersweet moment to admire how pink and wrinkly Sam had been. She swallowed down anymore sobs and hurriedly wiped away her tear. 

She put that photo with the other one, separate from the rest. 

After that there was a large stretch of time between the next photo. Years were skipped and Jessica could only guess Mary’s untimely death made picture taking low priority in John’s mind. Then Sam was out of his toddler years and Dean was on his way to being a preteen. They were both shirtless and grinning, sun kissed and dripping wet standing on a dirt yard with a backdrop of an unkempt two story with a large paint peeling wood porch, and dust caked windows. Jessica turned the picture over to read the caption written in the shaky messy handwriting of a child. 

_Dean + Sam Bobby’s House ’88._

The rest of the pictures after that were sporadic. Sometimes there would be years in-between and almost none of them showed John. 

_Dean + Sam Pastor Jim’s. Dean + Sam Caleb’s. Dean + Sam Maine. Dean + Sam Texas. Dean + Sam Second Largest Ball of Twine._

Maybe a handful of pictures of John were scattered here and there. The rest were Dean and Sam, sometimes by themselves, sometimes with other grown men smiling next to them. They all looked rough and hard, like men that worked, and fought, and earned their scars and muscles the hard way. Even the pastor gave off the impression of harsh living. 

As she watched Dean and Sam grow older she watched them both fill out more than normal boys their age should. She would know, she was a nurse and worked with boys of all shapes and sizes. Dean and Sam both had more muscle mass even than some of the dedicated athletes she’d done physicals on. 

Both boys seemed to harden in more ways than one as they got older, Dean more so than Sam. While Sam had chubby cheeks and a measure of baby fat, Dean at the same age had lean muscle and sharp features. Jessica was positive that if he had come through her exam room she would have discovered that he had an almost unhealthy lack of fat on his body and borderline malnutrition. 

Dean looked neglected and Sam looked healthy. It didn’t take a genius to guess why that was. After all, big brothers were supposed to take care of their little brothers. 

A surge of anger at John Winchester welled up inside her and Jessica had to force it down to concentrate on the task at hand. Discovering her husband’s past. 

She looked through every single picture. She watched the brothers grow up, read the captions in steadily improving handwriting until it finally settled on a sharp jagged script that was unmistakably masculine. She knew Dean was the one that had painstakingly labeled each photo because Sam’s handwriting, while sharp, was more controlled and precise. 

The last picture at the bottom of the stack was of two almost grown men leaning against a classic black beast of a car. 

A younger, skinnier Sam was easily recognizable. His clothes were not. Faded jeans, plaid over shirt, scuffed boots. His hair was still long to his chin and unruly. He was grinning that happy grin that she loved so much. 

Next to him, just as recognizable was Agent Lugosi, the man from the funeral, Dean Winchester.

He was younger, the dichotomy between his twenty something youth and his present haggard features made his figure in the photo look painfully young. Even inches shorter than Sam he was still a tall man. With broad shoulders, lean muscle, lightly tanned skin, a smattering of freckles across his sharp straight nose, and sun bleached hair he was handsome. He wore a battered leather jacket, broken in jeans, scuffed biker boots, and a mischievous smirk. His bright green eyes gleamed happily as he had an arm thrown around the younger Sam’s shoulders pulling him tight against his side. 

Jessica looked at the picture in her hands and didn’t really know how she was supposed to react. Sam looked so happy. He was obviously loved dearly by his brother. His father may have been largely absent, his lack of presence in the photos evidence enough, but what little he did appear it was obvious he did love his sons. Not, perhaps, as unreservedly as Dean seemed to love Sam, but still loved them just the same. 

Their life after their mother died was harsh, she could tell, none of the photos were taken in the same place consecutively. The evolution of their growing bodies hinted at a disturbingly violent life. John, too, had aged roughly with every picture. Jessica could see why Sam would want to get away from this life, whatever life it had been, but she couldn’t see how he would want to become totally estranged from his family. 

Then again she didn’t have all the facts. She didn’t know the story, Sam’s story. Sam hadn’t trusted her enough to tell it. 

That thought burned in the back of her throat and she quickly turned her mind to the other mystery she’d discovered. 

Dean Winchester. Agent Lugosi. The man at the funeral. 

He’d appeared after his brother had died. He stayed on the fringes of the mourners. He’d staked out her house for three days then posed as an FBI agent and asked her very uncomfortable questions. Jessica didn’t know what he wanted. She didn’t really know who he was. 

Sam had run away from his family, he had a box of occult adjacent knick-knacks, and he suddenly had more secrets than Jessica thought she could stomach. Sam had never talked about his family and now she had an estranged brother-in-law practically stalking her. 

She looked around at all the confusing clues to Sam’s life before her and a disturbing thought fluttered through her mind. The pictures she found told a story of a rough at least partially violent childhood. It was obvious the boys had been dealing with danger from a young age. Though Sam seemed to have been spared some of it, Dean had been frequently photographed with a black eye, a busted lip, a line of stitches barely visible crawling up his bicep under his t-shirt. 

Sam may not have been violent, but she was willing to bet that Dean had. Even in the photos he seemed to be shadowed with a glint of danger and the possibility of violence. 

Jessica thought back to her interactions with him. She thought back to seeing him with empty grief filled eyes from across the funeral parlor. She thought back to seeing him appear on her doorstep dressed in a cheap suit with a fake smile. 

He’d dressed in leather and jeans and boots, and she’d thought he didn’t fit in with the people milling around in more ways than just dress. He stood in her entranceway and looked around at the evidence of his brother’s life and didn’t seem to really comprehend it. His eyes had been darkened with experience, his face weathered with a hard life, his knuckles crooked from badly healed breaks, his hands scarred and callused. 

She’d known he wasn’t really an FBI agent. That much she could put together since he was the only thing in those days after she put her husband to rest that really stood out from the haze of grief. But she hadn’t been paying enough attention. 

Looking at the photo of a young Sam and his too old for his age brother, Jessica felt a shiver rush up her spine. Was Dean simply here to mourn his brother? Had he just wanted to satisfy his morbid curiosity of Sam’s life without him? Would she ever see him again or had he gotten what he’d come for?

Jessica didn’t know and as she looked around at the arcane symbols, the knives, the photos of a life she’d known absolutely nothing about, she realized that she was tired. She was tired of her grief, tired of trying to start her life over again, and tired of all the questions and doubts about the man she loved.

She dumped the things back in the box not caring about the haphazard disorganization. She shoved the lid back on, hiding Sam’s secrets from her blurring vision, and almost violently shoved the box back into the closet. 

It was almost two in the morning and she was tired.

*  
TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her husband, Sam, is brutally murdered, Jessica struggles with just getting out of bed in the morning. When a mysterious stranger knocks on her door, he makes her question everything she knew about her husband, but he also gives her hope that maybe Sam didn’t leave her all alone in the world after all.

Dean was tired. So very tired. 

He hadn’t realized until now just how little sleep he’d gotten in the last two weeks. Two days on the road nonstop, three days sitting vigil outside Sam’s house, days of anticipation of the hunt. And now, he was once again parked outside a picturesque two story in the middle of the night bleeding from the gut and so very tired. 

Just a little longer, he told himself. Just a little longer and then he could rest. It felt like he hadn’t truly rested for fourteen years, but now, just one more thing, just a little longer and he could finally rest. 

It seemed like between one blink and the next, Dean was on Sam’s porch. He didn’t bother trying to hold his belly together. In a little while it wouldn’t really matter. He didn’t notice that he’d left a trail of blood from the Impala all the way to the welcome mat. He didn’t notice the steadily growing puddle at his feet. 

The doorbell sounded just at incongruously cheerful as it had last time. Jessica Winchester’s footsteps across the wood floors sounded just as soft. It was almost soothing. Dean closed his eyes to just breathe, to gather enough strength to do this one last thing. He heard the deadbolt unlock and the door hinges creak. His eyes opened and just like last time Jessica stood in the doorway in a worn soft t-shirt, barefoot, sad, and still beautiful. 

You sure know how to pick ’em, Sammy.

They stared at each other. Jessica stood wary of the stranger on her welcome mat and Dean stood trying to memorize the woman in front of him. His little brother’s most important thing. 

“It’s finished,” he rasped sounding like it took all his strength. “I killed the thing that killed Sammy. It’s finally finished.” 

When Jessica opened her door to find her husband’s brother standing on her doorstep in the dead of the night, she had to try hard not to show her fear. He looked like he’d been in a fight. His face was scraped on one side like road rash, blood from a gash on his scalp was smeared across his forehead, caked with dirt in his hair. His eyes were wild and bright. 

He looked manic and triumphant and just a little bit crazy. Her heart was pounding, afraid of his man that she didn’t know, that was part of something that Sam had run away from. Afraid of how he looked like he’d been through a battle and had reveled in the fight. 

Then his words reached her ears through her whirling fears. _I killed the thing that killed Sammy._

Doubts she didn’t even know she had about Sam’s death pinged and bounced off the things she’d found in his box, ricocheted off evidence of a hard violent life on this stranger’s body to finally settle on fueling the burning questions piling up in her mind. 

Jessica stared at her husband’s brother standing on her welcome mat battered and bleeding and victorious shining in his bright green eyes. She stared at him and let out a sob of relief she didn’t even know she needed. 

The sound of her sob seemed to be what he was waiting for. He let out a heavy ragged breath and collapsed.

Jessica gasped and jumped back. He hit the floor hard and didn’t move again. It was then that she noticed the puddle of blood slowly drying on her porch and the blood seeping out from his body on her floor. 

“Oh fuck.” Running a shaking hand over her hair, Jessica took a second to just stare in shock before her instincts kicked in. 

Jessica was not a small woman. She stood inches over the majority of her coworkers and had had the worst trouble finding a boyfriend not intimidated by her height. It was like a miracle that Sam was actually almost half a head taller than her. 

Dean Winchester was inches shorter than his brother, but still inches taller than her and had just as much if not more muscle mass than Sam had. Jessica wasn’t a lightweight by normal standards, but Dean was a big man and he was almost too heavy for her to handle. 

If that wasn’t a challenge enough, Jessica didn’t know just how injured he was and she was afraid moving him would make it worse, but she couldn’t just leave him sprawled half in-half out of her house. Not only was it a sure way for him to actually die on her, but if the neighbors saw a man collapse on her porch the police would be called and she was pretty sure that not only did she not want to deal with that, but that Dean really wouldn’t want to deal with that either. 

Jessica, after everything she’d learned and hadn’t learned about Sam’s family and Dean in particular, felt it was a safe assumption to make that Dean would have some kind of trouble with the law in some form. 

Struggling to turn him over on his back, Jessica found in a glance that all the blood was coming from a dangerously deep wound on his belly. Then she was moving to grab his arms to try and drag him further inside without dislocating his wrists. She made it into the living room sparing a second to shove the coffee table out the way before dragging him onto the area rug. 

The snap judgment that it was probably easier to get rid of a rug than it would be scrub blood off a floor should surprise her with the calm practicality of it. Shoving the thoughts away, she’ll be impressed with herself after she kept her brother-in-law from bleeding out. 

Thank God she kept a professionally stocked first aid kit in the closet, Jessica thought after a more thorough examination of the man in front of her. She was surprised she didn’t rip the closet door off the hinges to grab it. Skidding to her knees next to Dean, Jessica let herself fall into her training as a nurse. Sure, she was a pediatric nurse and the worse she saw was the odd accidental butt shot with a BB gun, but she’d been trained for worse. She dredged up that training like there was a life at stake. Which there was. 

She cut Dean’s shirt open and started packing the wound with gauze to stop the bleeding before she tried to do anything like stitch it up. Thankfully puddles of blood always looked worse than they were, and Dean hadn’t actually lost that much blood. Pressing down hard on his belly, Jessica looked at his face and didn’t really like what she saw. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks were gaunt, his skin was almost grey, his lips were chapped. Exhaustion, she thought, dehydration, malnutrition. 

He collapsed more from that than from blood loss. His wounds hadn’t helped, but she was sure he would have collapsed sooner rather than later anyway. 

Jessica’s heart gave a lurch in sympathy and continued to go about patching him up. In the back of her mind she thought of those old photos when the bleeding stopped and she examined the wound for debris to start cleaning it out. The photos had reflected so much love. Every smile Dean had cast at Sam was filled with love. He’d practically raised him if the absence of their father in the photos was any indication. He’d taken care of Sam to the detriment of himself it seemed from the visible discrepancy in their physical appearances. 

She looked at him again and saw a grieving, haggard man. The last fourteen years had not been easy on him. 

The job of caring for Dean’s wound sped up time as she worked in a haze of focused procedure. Suddenly she went from trying to keep the blood inside his body to stitching him closed with steady practiced movements. She fumbled momentarily when she realized she hadn’t stopped to put on gloves and her hands were slick and sticky with drying blood. 

Her fingers resumed their task and she resolved to worry about possible blood transmitted diseases later. After she finished saving Sam’s brother from bleeding out in front of her collection of Jane Austen movies. 

Jessica put the finishing touches on the wound, antibacterial cream, not stick absorbent bandages, and a quick wipe down of the surrounding area of blood and dirt. Dean was breathing easy and his heart rate was normal, he was going to live regardless of his bodily neglect. She let herself take a moment to breathe and shake and let out one more sob then she got back to work on the other not so terrifying injuries he had. 

After scrubbing her hands with the most astringent soap she had, Jessica packed up the first aid kit, was as gentle as possible in divesting Dean of the rest of his clothes leaving him a pair of faded boxer briefs. She shoved a towel under his back over the blood stain on the rug, put a pillow under his head and did her best to bundle him up in blankets without moving him too much. 

She was jittery and exhausted and had tears drying on her cheeks, but she didn’t stop. Yanking her least favorite rattiest towels from the linen closet she tried to soak up and scrub away as much blood from her floors as possible. Her welcome mat was a lost cause and it was tossed into the big black trash bag along with the stained towels. She threw the entire thing by the trashcan in the garage to deal with later and untangled the garden hose from the messy knot on the side of the house. 

The sun was just starting to rise and Mrs. Havisham from down the block would be on her early morning stroll any moment now so Jessica didn’t waste any time. The water was turned up as high as it would go and she used it as a makeshift power wash on the blood trailing up her front walk and the stairs on her porch. 

One last scan for any more damage, she turned off the hose, stumbled up the stairs into the house, locked the door behind her, and checked on her patient. When she saw that he was in fact still breathing, she shut herself in her bedroom and collapsed exhausted on her bed. She was passed out before her head hit the pillow.

*

Dean woke groggy and in pain. His head, his neck, his back, his gut, fuck even his feet hurt. The pain, as prevalent as it was, was not new or worrying. He was used to it. Hunting alone wasn’t a safe occupation, but after Sam left, after Dad died, there was no way he could stomach putting that much trust in another hunter.

Plus most hunters were fucking idiots. 

So, he woke to pain, his head was filled with cobwebs and it took him longer than he would have liked to fight to consciousness through the lead weight of exhaustion over him. He’d felt this kind of exhaustion before. It came just when he’d finally given in and slept, before the hallucinations started, but after he couldn’t feel his face anymore. 

Dean held perfectly still and took silent stock of his body and his surroundings. Even agony and exhaustion couldn’t make him forget his training. He was naked, mostly, he was lying on a fluffy thing on the floor, he was wrapped in a blanket and his head was resting on a pillow. 

So, he wasn’t lying bleeding out in the alley next to a dead werewolf and he wasn’t lying in a motel room with a new hole out the back of his head. He didn’t know whether to be happy about that or not. He decided to just push that to the back of his head and concentrate on now. 

The memory of looking his brother’s widow in the eye and telling her he’d killed the thing that killed Sam came back to him. It was hazy around the edges, presumably from his bleeding out, but he could still remember every single second of it. Up until his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he assumed he collapsed on her doorstep. 

Dean figured, since he wasn’t in the morgue or handcuffed to a hospital bed, that Jessica Winchester had taken it upon herself to patch him up. He didn’t know why she would even bother since he was a stranger to her and she probably thought he was an insane criminal showing up bleeding on her welcome mat in the middle of the night. 

He didn’t know why she would patch him up and she’d done a good job of it, too. Even without examining his wound he’d been stitched up enough times to be able to tell when it was a professional job. He didn’t know why, but he figured he would find out soon enough since he could smell coffee and hear her stepping lightly around her kitchen.

Awake Dean might be, but willing to risk more agony by moving he was not, so he just blinked his eyes open and took in his surroundings while he waited for her to notice. 

Turning his head to the right he learned he was both in her living room and lying on her fluffy flower area rug. He figured she couldn’t wrestle him up on a bed or the couch so he wasn’t too annoyed to be on the floor. 

The wood floor creaked quietly and Dean turned his head to watch her walk through the doorway and into the living room. She was wearing a stretched out t-shirt, flannel pajama pants printed with rainbows and clouds, and her sleep mussed blond hair was pulled up into a ponytail. She looked better since the last time Dean had seen her and it was easy to see how she caught his brother’s eye in the first place. She was definitely a beautiful woman. 

Stopping just inside the living room, Jessica’s hand tightened around her Peru souvenir mug and just looked at Dean for a long moment. He held her gaze steadily and waited for her make the first move. 

“So, you’re awake.” She sipped at her coffee to distract herself from the tremor in her hands. 

“It looks like.” 

Suddenly uncomfortable lying vulnerable on the floor Dean slowly eased himself up on one elbow. His belly wound pulled, but the stiches held. 

Jessica took a step forward as if to help then thought better of it. She may have patched him up, gotten his blood on her hands, and seen him mostly naked, but this didn’t feel like a moment where either of them would be comfortable being touched. 

Dean grimaced both from the pain and from the situation he’d put them in. He was pretty sure she had to be freaked out and that she had questions. The near future wasn’t going to be pleasant. Even so, he wasn’t going to hide from this. 

“Thank you,” he said grave and utterly honest. “For saving my life.” 

Jessica’s cheeks pinked and she looked away. “You’re welcome.” It sounded like she meant it. She met Dean’s gaze again. “I couldn’t just leave my husband’s brother to die on my porch.” 

An icy wave went down Dean’s spine and his stomach lurched. It felt like he was going to throw up. “How did you know?” 

Jessica took a step closer and fiddled with her coffee mug to have something to do with her hands. “I saw you,” she said. “At the funeral and outside my house.” Biting her lip, her breath stuttered in her throat. “I found a box of Sam’s things and you were in the photographs.”

Dean didn’t think he would be able to feel any more pain for the rest of his lifetime, but he’d been wrong. The knowledge that Sam had kept something from their life, something so precious as their family photos was like a bittersweet knife to the chest. 

“He kept photos? Of us?”

“Of your family.” Her expression gentled and she gave him a brittle smile. “Your mother and father and your friends.”

Dean covered his eyes with a shaking hand and struggled to breathe around the tightness in his throat. He didn’t think he could cry anymore, but he had to wipe away one last tear before he wrestled back control. 

“Thank you,” he rasped. 

Jessica just nodded in acceptance. They fell into a sympathetic silence, for the first time sharing in the grief for a man they both loved equally and differently. 

After a steadying inhale, Dean looked back at his brother’s widow. She had questions, he could see them brewing. No matter how laidback she seemed now about letting her estranged brother-in-law bleed all over her rug, there was no way she wasn’t going to demand answers sooner or later. And she was due them, Dean knew. She’d loved Sam and lost him just as Dean had, and if that didn’t give her enough right to know the truth, then the fact that Dean had told her he’d killed the thing that killed Sam sure would be enough reason for her to demand it. 

It’s been a long time since Dean had last heard, “We do what we do and we shut up about it.” He’d long since given up on his fragile hope that telling people the truth wouldn’t end in disaster. Fourteen years is a long time for life to beat you down, and Dean hadn’t been hopefully naïve like that for at least a decade. But Jessica deserved to hear the truth from Dean and he would do right by his brother’s widow in at least that.

He tried to push up with his elbows ’til his was sitting up straight. A determined mask settled over his face and he opened his mouth to begin telling her of impossible things.

“I’m sure you’re hungry,” Jessica interrupted him and took a nervous step back. Her heart was suddenly pounding and the tremble in her hands had returned. She didn’t want to hear what Dean was going to say. At least not yet, she’d give herself until her patient had eaten and then she would listen to what he said. 

Then she would listen to how many secretes the man she loved had kept from her. 

“I was going to start making some eggs and bacon. I’ll bring you some.” She turned and disappeared down the hall without waiting for Dean’s reply. 

Before Dean could get any food, however, he had to get dressed. It wasn’t good for him to stay on the floor and she didn’t want him to get cold since he was suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, minor blood loss, and exhaustion. 

She worked on autopilot and ignored the emotions stirred up by digging around in Sam’s drawers. Hurrying back to her brother-in-law now perched precariously on the couch, she handed him a pair of worn soft plaid pajama pants and a stretched out t-shirt. 

Jessica didn’t want to hover over him while Dean got dressed so she kept an eye on him from the kitchen as she whisked up some eggs. Dean didn’t seem like the kind of man that would ask for help voluntarily, much less take well to being weakened by an injury. Thankfully, he seemed to do alright on his own. Worryingly, however, it seemed like he’d had plenty of practice taking care of himself while wounded. 

The pajama pants were inches too long, but the t-shirt fit alright because of his heavy musculature. When he was clothed, Jessica felt a little bit of relief. It was one thing to see your husband’s brother naked while keeping his blood from spilling out everywhere; it was another thing for him to just lounge around like that. 

When Dean was settled stiffly leaning back against the couch, Jessica started setting out his breakfast. A glass of orange juice –for the blood loss-, a glass of water –for the dehydration-, and a plate piled high with eggs and bacon and toast –for the malnutrition. They descended into a more comfortable silence as they both studiously ignored the awkwardness of Dean wearing his dead brother’s clothes. 

The comfortableness didn’t last long.

“You didn’t have to do this.”

Jessica glanced over at Dean as he looked up from his breakfast. She was seated in the loveseat next to the sofa with a refill of her coffee clutched tightly in her hands. 

“Do what?” she asked, even though she knew. 

Dean gestured vaguely in the direction of the plate in his lap and the hidden wound in his gut. “This. You didn’t have to patch me up. You didn’t have to make me breakfast.”

She snorted derisively before she could smother it. “What? You expected me to just leave you to die? To let you walk out my door while you’re a stiff wind away from collapsing again from hunger and exhaustion.” 

He stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re-”

“I’m a nurse, Dean,” Jessica cut him off with a stern look. The one she used on the recalcitrant teens that insisted they hadn’t actually sprained their ankles attempting to skateboard on a homemade ramp. “I know the signs of physical neglect. You could black out the sun with the shadows under your eyes and you could cut a hand on your cheekbones. I know you spent three days straight sitting outside my house, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.” 

He scowled and started to protest, but Jessica talked over him. 

“Even if you had been taking care of yourself I wouldn’t let you leave anyway. I let you bleed all over my rug so I have an obligation to make sure you recover.” 

She knew that wasn’t really how it worked, but Jessica needed answers. She needed to know the truth about Sam, and she needed his brother, the last living link she had to him, to not die from self-destructive neglect.

Dean blew out an unhappy breath even as he resigned himself to staying. His wound pulled painfully and he resisted the urge to wrap an arm around himself. Truthfully he knew he wasn’t in any shape to take care of himself much less make the drive to Bobby’s so he could be laid up in safety. He had already silently pledged to give Jessica answers so he wasn’t going anywhere anyway. If she was so determined to keep him here in her house as well then he couldn’t muster up the energy to fight her. 

“I haven’t been the only one neglecting themselves,” Dean pointed out looking at Jessica. “You haven’t been too great yourself.” 

Glancing up from her coffee Jessica met his gaze. “My husband died, Agent Lugosi. It’s all I can do to get up in the morning and go to work.”

Dean winced under her glare. It’s the first time he felt shame for lying like that. 

He must have given himself away, because Jessica was curious again. “Why lie?” she asked. “Why not tell me who you were?”

He gave her a darkly wry smirk. “What would I say? ‘Hi, I’m your husband’s estranged brother who he hasn’t talked to in fourteen years’? ‘He hated our life so bad he didn’t even tell you he had a brother’? Should I have said that instead?”

“No. I don’t know.” She shook her head frustrated. “I don’t know! My husband is dead and I just found out that he kept his entire life a secret. I don’t know what you should have said, but I had to find out looking through a box with a collection of insane things, full of a life I never knew about!” Jessica swallowed thickly. “I’m all by myself now and I just want to know- I want to know the truth.” 

Dean had to stomp down on a shameful well of anger at his brother. Sam had kept his entire life a secret from the woman he loved then he’d gone and fuckin died leaving Dean to take away her illusion of a normal apple pie life. 

“I’ll tell you the truth, Jessica.” He looked her in the eyes. “You deserve to know. I owe you that much.” 

She let out a shaky breath, scared but determined. “Please. Please tell me.”

Dean took a breath and started with the night the Winchester family fell apart. 

*

Jessica was curled up in her chair with her hands clenched white-knuckled in her lap to hide their shaking. The things she was hearing coming out of Dean’s mouth were too horrible to be real. They shouldn’t be real. 

“It’s all real,” she murmured a slim vain hope that Dean was lying, that he would suddenly take it all back. 

He didn’t. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Ghosts, demons, werewolves, ghouls. Pretty much every evil thing you can think of. It’s all real.”

“And you and-,” her breath hitched. “You and Sam, you hunted them.” 

“Salt for ghosts, silver for shifters, holy water for demons. Yeah.” Dean flashed her an unpleasant smirk. “We hunt them.” 

“Of course you do.” Jessica wasn’t feeling much of anything after all of that, just numb. 

Sam had spent twelve years lying to her. Lying about how his mother died, about what his life was like, about a million little things that she’d just thought were cute little quirks of his that made her love him even more. Sam spent eight years of their marriage letting Jessica believe that his family never came for the holidays because they were ashamed of him not because he was ashamed of them. 

Some distant part of her could understand why he would want to get away, why he would lie. Who in their right mind would believe that people actually hunted all the creatures from the horror films? Who in their right mind would believe that their mother had died burning up on the ceiling? 

But then Jessica thought about all the little times that Sam would lie to her and her heart just ached that he didn’t trust her enough to at least give her the benefit of the doubt with the truth of his past. 

She loved him, Jessica thinks she would always love him, but that betrayal hurt almost as bad as his death. 

Jessica turned her attention back to Dean, Sam’s brother, her brother-in-law. He was watching her warily, studying her reaction to the truth of his and Sam’s life. He was waiting for her judgment. 

She could guess at what he was waiting for. The house phone was next to her on the end table, it would only take her a second to pick it up and dial the police. By the carefully neutral expression on his face, Jessica figured that’s what he was waiting for. There was a small part of her that wanted to cling to the comfortable ignorance of Sam’s lies and itched to reach of the handset and dial. The larger part of her that still ached with love for her husband despite of his many flaws felt relief. 

Jessica had never liked to be kept in the dark and it would have always plagued her in the back of her mind that all the strange questions she had would never be answered. 

Abruptly she stood up from her curled up perch and grabbed up her cold coffee mug. Dean gave a small jolt in surprise and tensed. 

It was impossible and crazy and she couldn’t believe that she believed it. Now that she did believe, however, the choice of what she was going to do about it was simple to make. 

“It’s almost lunch time. You’ve lost a lot of blood and need some iron,” she announced non-sequitur. “I think there are some steaks in the freezer. I’ll fix a couple for lunch then you need to rest some more.” 

Dean incredulously watched her make her way back to the door to the kitchen with sure steady steps. This turn of events confused him. 

Jessica made it to the doorway then she paused and turned back to Dean with a small genuine smile on her face. “Dean,” she called waiting until he met her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, “for telling me the truth.”

He cleared his throat, but held her gaze. “You’re welcome.”

She gave him another small smile then disappeared into the kitchen leaving Dean sitting on her couch in her dead husband’s sweats staring after her.

*

Lunch consisted of large medium-cooked steaks, a large green salad, and a large platter of mixed vegetables. It was a lot of food and it was obvious that Jessica was used to cooking for a man with a large appetite. If she maybe cooked an extra steak and sat there glaring sternly at Dean until he finished it off, well nobody could blame her. She was nurse, a caretaker, and Dean was already worryingly underweight. 

She’d been at loose ends since her life had crumbled down around her and if taking care of her long lost brother-in-law gave her a little bit of purpose back, well she figured she deserved a break after life had screwed her over. 

After lunch Jessica made sure Dean was passed out on her guest bed before she started with the haphazard plan that had been forming in her mind since she’d accepted the reality of the supernatural and Dean’s self-appointed mission to hunt the evil that hunts us. 

Dean’s clothes were scrapped, too torn up and soaked with blood to be salvageable so they went in the trash along with her ruined towels, welcome mat, and her living room rug. Taking into account her suspicions of Dean’s avoidance of law-enforcement Jessica took the time to grab the trash bag of stuff she’d tossed the night before and drag everything with even a speck of blood on it to the backyard and soaked it all with bleach. The chances of her trash being raided and the all the evidence of him bleeding out in her living room being found was slim, but her neighbors were nosy and she didn’t want to take the risk that someone had gotten suspicious of the rough looking man camped out in front of her house and called the cops. 

Better safe than sorry was a good rule to start to live by she figured, if she wanted Dean to come back at some point in the future. And she did want him to come back. He was a link to her Sam, a living breathing reminder of the man she loved and the only person who could really understand the enormity of her loss. 

When Jessica married Sam what was his became hers and what was hers became his. Dean was Sam’s family and the moment Jessica had met him he became her family as well. Jessica had been taught that you take care of family. 

From what she’d seen of him so far, Dean needed some serious taking care of. 

Jessica decided that she was going to look after Dean at least until he was healed up enough that the possibility of him suddenly keeling over was gone. From what she could guess from her admittedly limited interaction with him, he was not a man that took well to depending on other people so she was going to have to make it clear that she wasn’t letting him leave until she was damn good and ready. 

She cleaned out the pockets of his jeans before they went into the trash bag and scooped up his keys from the pile of receipts and a wallet full of fake IDs.

The car Dean drove was a big black beast. It was a classic muscle car and it was obviously well taken care of despite the layers of dirt caked over the paint job, the large collection of fast-food wrappers, and empty liquor bottles clinking around on the floorboards. When Jessica sat in the driver’s seat and turned the car on the rumble of the engine could be felt through the entire vehicle. It was such a departure from her little economy sedan it was almost comical. 

The turning radius wasn’t great, but it could be worse. She didn’t have much of a problem backing it into her driveway. Her garage was already taken up by her and Sam’s cars so it would have to be contented with taking up driveway space. 

Dean needed clothes. He couldn’t just keep wearing Sam’s. The sight of him in them made her uncomfortable and she was sure Dean shared her sentiment. So, she dug around in the backseat looking for some sort of luggage. She didn’t find any. 

Moving around to the back of the car she tried out the extra key on the key chain and quickly popped the trunk open. What she found there was a little shocking and a bucket of cold reality. 

She found a green surplus duffle bag that did indeed hold what appeared to be his entire wardrobe. Not a single piece of it was clean so she would have to remedy that. She also found a couple of gallon jugs of water with rosaries floating inside. Taking a wild guess she would have said they were probably holy water. Next to the holy water were what appeared to be industrial sized bags of salt. 

Thinking back to the little Dean had told her about the details of their hunting job, Jessica figured they were for the ghosts and demons a hunter might come across. God, it was beyond weird that she actually used supernatural fighting lingo. 

“Hunters, right.” She chuckled a little hysterically. 

She was about to close up the trunk and tote Dean’s duffle inside when she noticed the proportions of the trunk were off. It only took a second to find the false bottom and discover the massive box of weapons. 

“Holy shit.” 

Guns. A lot of guns. Pistols and shotguns mainly, in all their various incarnations were piled up inside right next to the innumerable boxes of ammo. Shotgun shells and bullets that were definitely not standard issue, all of them in different calibers and types. 

“Oh, my God. He’s got throwing stars.” She poked at one attached to the lid incredulously. Then something big and black caught her eye. “Of course. Of fucking course he’s got a grenade launcher.”

That couldn’t be legal. You know what? She knew damn well that wasn’t legal. 

If the guns and grenade launcher weren’t enough there were also a wide range of things with pointy ends tossed haphazardly inside. Wooden stakes, metal spikes, and more knives than she’d ever seen in her life. 

“Well,” Jessica leaned back and surveyed it all with a pragmatic eye. “It’s a good thing he’s a hunter and not a serial killer, ’cause otherwise I’d be freaking the fuck out right about now.” 

Who was she kidding? She was definitely freaking the fuck out. 

She was also talking to herself so she figured harboring a monster hunter wasn’t going to weird her out for much longer since, you know, she was obviously going crazy. 

Resolutely deciding not to think about the armory parked in her driveway, Jessica closed everything up, made damn sure she locked the trunk, and headed inside, Dean’s duffle of dirty cloths tossed over her shoulder. 

Dean was still passed out underneath her grandmother’s patchwork quilt on her guest bed so she decided to get a start on his laundry. It was a little traumatizing. She wasn’t sure what half the stains on his clothes were, but most of them were either permanently set or still crusty. 

She was certainly not thinking about how some of them were probably monster goo. 

Jessica tossed his t-shirts and underwear, all frayed and faded, elastics stretched and needing to be thrown out, in the wash with extra strength bleach based detergent and set on the most intense wash setting possible. Once the load was tossing around in the machine she paused and thought about what she could do for the next forty minutes. 

If she kept busy, she didn’t have to think and not having to think was what she wanted desperately. The last eighteen hours were more than any person should have to handle. Not only did she patch up a guy that had been in a fight with a werewolf, she had to learn the truth about her husband’s awful childhood. 

And it had been awful. Having your mother burned up on the ceiling and you father obsessed with finding the thing that killed her. Being raised to hunt the things in the dark. Moving around the country, never staying in one place longer than six months. She couldn’t imagine. She didn’t want to imagine. 

She didn’t want to think about the pain and fear and sadness in the life of someone she loved. Sam was already dead, she didn’t want to have to think about anymore terrible things happening in his life. 

Groceries. She needed groceries. If Dean ate nearly as much as Sam did, there was no way she’d be able to feed them both on the meager findings currently in her fridge. 

Jessica shoved her feet in some running shoes, grabbed her purse and her car keys and left a note on the kitchen counter in case Dean woke up while she was gone. She locked up the house then headed into the garage and jumped in her car. The garage door rolled up noisily like it always did and she was quickly on her way to the nearest grocery store. 

Groceries. Groceries. What kind of groceries should she get? Definitely a lot of meat. And some potatoes. Dean seemed like a meat and potatoes kind of guy. And sandwich meat, more eggs, some greens, ice cream…

_Dean-_  
Went to get food. Be back soon.  
-Jessica 

*

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her husband, Sam, is brutally murdered, Jessica struggles with just getting out of bed in the morning. When a mysterious stranger knocks on her door, he makes her question everything she knew about her husband, but he also gives her hope that maybe Sam didn’t leave her all alone in the world after all.

Dean woke up for the second time to the smell of food. If it was possible he felt more beat up than he did waking up on the floor. Where before he was mostly feeling the pain from his belly wound, now he could feel the road rash down his face, the gash on his hair line, and the numerous overtaxed muscles throughout his body. 

He hadn’t noticed it the first time he was conscious, but, on closer inspection of the lack of dirt and grime on his body, he realized Jessica had pretty much given him a sponge bath on her living room floor. He was grateful, but distinctly comfortable with the idea that his brother’s wife had scrubbed him clean while he was unconscious and mostly naked. 

Levering himself up slowly, he looked around and took in the guest room for the time while he wasn’t in an exhausted haze. It was simple and strangely homey. There was a collection of photographs of famous landmarks that had obviously been taken by Jessica and Sam themselves. The dresser, bedside table, and bed were a matching set. The carpet under his feet was clean and soft. 

The few decorative knick-knacks scattered around the room were obviously more souvenirs from their travels.

The knowledge that Sam had done all the things he’d dreamed about, became a lawyer, married the girl, got the white picket fence, and traveled somewhere outside the United States, was bittersweet. Dean couldn’t be prouder of his little brother and he couldn’t be more hurt for being abandoned and forgotten. 

Pushing himself to standing, Dean moved over to the dresser and opened the drawers curiously. He was surprised to find all his clothes, washed and folded, neatly lined up inside. There was an odd feeling in his chest that landed somewhere between mildly violated and confusingly warm. 

Jessica had gone rummaging around in his car. Dean figured that was probably where most of the feelings of violation came from. Nobody messed with Baby, but he couldn’t find in himself to get angry about it. She was obviously trying to help, to do a good thing for him. He couldn’t get mad at her even if he wanted to. 

She, of anybody, should be exempt from his admittedly bad temper. She’d done so much for him, for Sammy. He was in her debt in almost every way conceivable. He’d let her invasion of Baby slide. Just this once, though. 

He couldn’t get out of Sam’s clothes fast enough and he pawed through the drawers until he found the only pair of sweats he owned. They had holes in the knees and the cuffs were frayed, but they weren’t his dead brother’s and that was all that mattered. He didn’t bother with shoes. 

Padding out of the guest room silently, Dean found his way into the kitchen doorway. Jessica didn’t know he was there so he just observed her. 

She was barefoot, too, dressed in loose jeans probably reserved for lounging at home and a t-shirt with a hole in the armpit and a stretched out collar. Her long wavy blond hair was tangled up in a bun at the back of her head and she was humming absently to the crappy pop music playing on the kitchen radio. 

Whatever she was cooking smelled good and Dean’s stomach clenched with hunger. He’d obviously slept through dinner and the next lunch and as she’d said that morning he hadn’t been getting in regular meals for a while now. 

Dean continued to watch her unnoticed as she swayed to the music and stirred a wooden spoon in a saucepan. She was beautiful and his heart ached for Sam. He’d fallen in love with a good woman. He’d deserved a lifetime of being loved by her. 

Jessica turned to grab some kind of spice from the rack on the counter and she caught a glimpse of him in the corner of her eye. 

Dean felt a flicker of amusement when she jumped about a foot in the air. 

“Jeezus!” She pressed a hand to her heart and gasped. “You scared me.” 

Dean stepped further into the kitchen and shrugged. “Sorry.”

He didn’t sound very sorry, but Jessica let it slide since he was still recovering. 

Looking him up and down Jessica observed, “You found your clothes.” 

His face contorted, annoyed. “Yeah, about that. No one touches my car.” 

She just snorted at him, unimpressed. Dean tried not to scowl. 

“I had to move your car into the driveway and get your clothes somehow.” She turned back to the stove speaking over her shoulder. “You were passed out and in no shape to be driving anyway.”

Dean was still not happy, but he couldn’t argue. She was right. 

“What are you making?” he changed the subject not trying to be subtle. 

“You need the carbs so I’m making pasta.” She sprinkled some random spice into the pan. “With meat sauce, of course.” 

His stomach gave an audible growl this time and Jessica hid a smile. “Sit down, it’ll be ready in a minute.” 

He ignored her suggestion and shuffled toward the cabinets closest to him. “Where do you keep your plates?” 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it.” She tried to intercept him. He turned a glare on her. 

Paused mid step, Jessica took in his stubborn jaw and determined eyes. She sighed and went back to the stove. 

“Cabinet right in front of you. Silverware in the second drawer from the left.” There was no convincing him to sit down and she figured it would be less hassle and stress on both of them to just let him set the table. That at least wasn’t strenuous enough to agitate his injuries. 

They sat down to a massive amount of pasta and a giant green salad. Dean would have complained about that, but one look at Jessica’s stern face and he kept quiet, shoveling two helpings of salad on his plate. He wondered if that look had worked on Sammy. Judging by the unsurprised satisfaction on her face he figured she’d had Sammy pretty whipped. 

He shoved a large forkful of pasta in his mouth and almost groaned. Not that being whipped by Jessica would be a hardship if she used her powers for force feeding. She was a damn good cook. 

Swallowing his big mouthful, he cleared his throat. “It’s good.” 

She smirked at him. “Thanks.”

They were quiet for a few minutes after that, just eating their dinner. Dean watched Jessica and could tell she had something on her mind. She had a little wrinkle between her eyes and was staring blankly at her plate. He decided to wait her out, once she figured out exactly what she wanted to ask, she would. 

He didn’t have to wait long. 

Jessica took a casual sip of her water. “How are your wounds? Anything I need to take a look at?”

That wasn’t what she had spinning around in her mind, but Dean let her stall. “My whole body feels like I got run over by a truck, but no more than usual, so I figure I’m good.” 

“And your belly wound?” She fiddled with her fork still trying for casual, but her fidgeting gave her away. 

“Stitches held up,” he said. “I probably won’t have much of a scar. You did good.”

She smiled absently. “Good. That’s good.”

They fell into silence again. Dean had cleaned his plate so he just sat back and watched her work up the courage for whatever it was that was on her mind. 

She finally gave up and set her fork down. “That arsenal in your trunk. Is that a normal hunter thing, or just a… you thing?” 

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You got into my trunk?”

“Well, your duffle wasn’t in the backseat,” she replied, defensive. “I had to find it somehow.”

He raised his hands in surrender, his lips twitching. “Easy. Just asking.”

Jessica huffed, pursing her lips in annoyance. “Is the arsenal normal or not?”

His lips twitched a little bit, he tried to stomp down on his amusement. He didn’t think she’d appreciate it. 

“All hunters have something of an arsenal they travel around with. You can’t just go around trying to pick up unregistered weapons in every town you have to hunt in.”

“What about the -um- stakes and things?”

“Lots of things you gotta kill by staking them,” he said. “Normally I wouldn’t have so many, but I just got done with a pagan god hunt before I… before I read about Sam.”

Jessica swallowed thickly and tried to press on. She was curious and needed a distraction. Supernatural arsenals provided a hell of a distraction. 

“Are pagan gods a normal kind of hunt?” she asked. 

“Nah, not usually.” Dean reached across the table and helped himself to the last bit of pasta. “You don’t usually find pagan gods in the US. If you do they’re usually brought over with immigrants from their homelands.” 

Jessica mulled that one over and realized that it actually made a strange sorta sense. “Huh.”

Dean smirked at her, enjoying her curiosity. “You got anything else on your mind?”

She frowned trying to think of anything other than what was actually on the tip of her tongue. Eventually she just gave up. “Throwing stars?” she burst out incredulously. “Really? What do you even kill with those?”

He threw his head back and laughed. Jessica startled at the sound and stared at him. He had a rusty, disused laugh, deep and gravely. It sounded like it was almost painful scraping up out of his throat. 

Dean didn’t realize he hadn’t laughed in… years. He didn’t know he could even laugh anymore. It had actually seemed like all happiness and mirth had been sucked out of the world when Sam died, but here he was sitting across from his brother’s widow truly laughing for the first time in years.

Sucking in a breath to calm himself, Dean’s eyes wrinkled as he grinned.

“Tell you the truth, sweetheart, I just think they’re freaking cool.”

Jessica was still a little stunned from the rolling sound of Dean’s laughter that her own surprised her. She hadn’t laughed since Sam had tickled her side and kissed her goodbye the morning of the day he died. It felt horrible and it felt freeing. 

It was like a good pain. A healing hurt that told her there was still happiness in the world. 

Here she was sitting across the table from her dead husband’s brother laughing for the first time since her life as she knew it had ended. God, it hurt in the best way possible. 

Their eyes met when Jessica’s giggles started to taper off. The long-lost mirth reflected in both their eyes set them off again. 

They sat in the kitchen with the remains of dinner between them laughing until they cried. 

*

The next two days were filled with stubbornness infecting the whole house. Stubborn Dean refusing to sit down and rest like he should. Stubborn Jessica running roughshod over Dean’s protests and putting her fingers in everything. 

Like his wardrobe. There was so much wrong with it that Jessica could barely stand it. Before Dean could even blink she’d thrown out two thirds of his clothes and disappeared out the door so he couldn’t even yell at her for it. 

Jessica was used to shopping for helpless men, so it was barely any exertion to steal Dean’s sizes and march through a department store like she was on a mission. 

First things first, there hadn’t been a single pair of Dean’s underwear that didn’t have a hole in it so she was starting from scratch there. She bought him enough boxer briefs for two weeks in a brand guarantied not to shred on the first run through a washing machine. It was practical and because she didn’t want them to be boring she made sure they were in varied colors and masculine patterns. 

He was down to one pair of jeans, so Jessica went there next and got him five pairs. She didn’t bother with designer. She was pretty sure they were going to be covered in blood and dirt and other things soon enough so she just made sure they were dark wash and plenty durable. 

She lingered awhile over the shirts and after some debate decided, “Screw it.” She went for broke and got him winter clothes on top of fleshing out his t-shirts and plaids. Long sleeves, a couple sweaters, and at least one heavy jacket. 

His shoes, she noticed, seemed to be only thing he hadn’t neglected. His boots were well taken care of and high quality with a bit more life left in them. And of course his dress shoes had barely any wear and tear on them. She didn’t have to worry there, but while she was thinking about it she swung by the formal section on her way to luggage. 

She picked out a couple nicer dress shirts and lingered for a few minutes picking out few ties that didn’t look like they were made of polyester from the ’09s. 

With basket laden with clothes Jessica finally wound up in the luggage section. It took her thirty minutes and one frustrated salesman, but she finally decided on large black duffle bag guarantied sturdy enough to be dragged around the world and beyond a couple times without tearing or ripping apart at the seams. It had enough pockets that Jessica figured Dean would have to work at it to be disorganized again. 

In the end Jessica dropped cash in the upper three digits and spent five minutes in the parking lot cutting off all the tags. Dean wouldn’t be able to complain about the price or try and return them. It was a done deal after that. 

As she was pulling into her driveway at home Jessica thought about the fact that she just bought her brother-in-law, who she didn’t even know existed before that week, an entire new wardrobe. 

She was crazy, she realized. She was actually legitimately crazy. Because she wanted Dean Winchester to stay alive, stay healthy, stay in her life and not leave her alone with her suffocating grief. She didn’t know of any other way of doing that than to take care of him in every way she could. 

Such as buying him a new wardrobe and force feeding him prime cut grade-A beef steak and maybe possibly slipping him a completely legal over-the-counter sleep aid so he’d actually get the rest he needs. 

Yep, she was absolutely crazy. 

And Dean told her so when he saw the number of bags she was hauling in the house. 

But Jessica looked at the healthier color of his skin, the lightening shadows under his eyes, and the easier way he was moving from lack of pain and exhaustion. And she just couldn’t bring herself to care. 

While Jessica was out buying him completely unneeded clothes and feeding him up like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, Dean was making his way around the house adding as many protections as he could with his limited range of movement and supplies. 

Salt was all well and good for the short term, lining windows and doors in a motel for example. But if you wanted the protection to last, which he very much did, Dean spare no expense so to speak. He carved intricate powerful protections symbols on either side of every outside door and on both ends of every window sill. After a moment of debate Dean decided better safe than sorry and fixed up some of the purifying hex bags he’d learned from a psychic named Missouri several years before. 

He didn’t think Jessica would be too happy if he started punching holes in her drywall, so while she was off on another trip to the grocery store (with the goal of getting more food to continue fattening him up) he found the access into the attic in the garage ceiling. Climbing up the rickety ladder into the dim, sweating hot attic to plant the hex bags in the four corners of the compass was maybe a little beyond his physical capabilities at that point. 

By the time he made it back down to the ground floor, closed up the attic access, and collapsed sweaty and dehydrated on the couch. Dean couldn’t even get up to get some water, just promptly passed out and didn’t wake up for three hours. 

When he did open his eyes later that afternoon it was to a very unhappy Jessica standing over him with a scowl on her face.

“I don’t know what the hell you did to exhaust yourself like this, but you better not do it again.” She pointed a threatening finger at his chest and loomed over him. “’Cause if you do, I will not hesitate to chain you to the bed and keep you there until either you’re completely healed or I’m satisfied you can behave yourself. Understood?”

Dean swallowed a slightly nervous lump in his throat and hoped his cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, sincerely chastised and thoroughly ignoring the inadvertent suggestiveness of her threat. 

Jessica eyed him for a moment before she straightened up and nodded. “Good. Dinner will be ready in ten.” 

She spun on her heel and stomped back into the kitchen, her steps still sounding angry.

Staring after her, Dean let out a breath and dropped his head back on the couch. Damn, Sammy, he thought, your girl can be freaking scary.

Ill-advised trip into the attic aside, Dean was able to place as many protections around the house and on Jessica’s car as he could with his limited supplies and physical ability at the moment. 

Demon activity, though it had risen in the last couple of decades, seemed to plateau since Yellow-Eyes had been put down. But the Winchester luck was notorious and bad, so Dean took advantage of Jessica going to work one day to dig out the black light spray paint from the trunk. He painted devil’s traps on the ceiling in front of every door and window in the house. He even made his way to the end of the path leading up to Jessica’s front door and painted one on the sidewalk.

After that he stashed a canister of salt, a bottle of holy water, and a length of iron rebar in the most heavily used rooms in the house. There was more he could do. There was always more he could do, but anything more required a moderate amount of demolition and excavation. And for that he would need Bobby. 

“Okay, now what do you do if the lights start flickering and you feel cold spots?” Dean was seated across the kitchen table from Jessica, eating a dinner of stir-fry and grilling her on hunting safety measures. 

“Um,” Jessica popped a piece of fried broccoli in her mouth and made a show of thinking. “Call an electrician and air-condition guy?”

“Jessica,” Dean grumbled unimpressed. 

Rolling her eyes, Jessica conceded. “Grab the salt or iron and maybe the holy water if I can smell sulfur. Right?” 

Satisfied, Dean nodded. “Right. And if someone can’t cross the thresholds? If they’re stuck in one of the devil’s traps?”

“Definitely grab the holy water and call you,” Jessica answered confidently. This would the third time Dean’s quizzed her about supernatural safety. She was fairly sure he was just being overly paranoid, but considering her husband was killed by a werewolf a little over a month ago and Dean had been doing this since he was four, she would take it seriously. Or at least with minimal eye rolling. 

“If I don’t answer, I’m gonna give you a couple phone numbers to call. Other hunters that I trust,” Dean told her shoveling the last morsels of dinner off his plate and into his mouth. 

“That you trust?” she repeated as she stood from the table and grabbed up his plate. 

“Yeah,” he stood as well and began helping her clear the table. “Our dad never let us interact with very many other hunters and I can understand why,” Dean said with a wry tone of voice. “The life of a hunter isn’t one that many people take up willingly. It isn’t often you can find a hunter that’s as well adjusted as I am.” 

Jessica paused in scarping the leftovers into Tupperware and shot him a look. “In other words, you’re saying most hunters are crazy.” 

Dean snorted and took the now empty bowl from her to start rinsing it in the sink. “There’s two types of crazy hunters,” he explained, squirting blue dish soap in the sink and picking up a scrub brush. “There’s the mostly harmless ones that have maybe seen one too many things in their career and it’s messed them up a little. And then there’s the ones that enjoy the job a little too much.” 

There was a dark shadow over Dean’s face and Jessica studied his expression curiously as she took the freshly scrubbed skillet from his hand to load into the dishwasher. “What do you mean, ‘enjoy the job too much’?”

Dean spent a long moment intensely scrubbing at a streak of cooked on grease on another pan before he spoke. “Some hunters don’t do the job to help people, to save them from the supernatural monsters in the night. They do the job because they like the killing.”

A shiver ran up Jessica’s spine and she straightened from the dishwasher, turning to fully face him. Dean shut off the faucet and stared blankly into the murky dishwater sitting in the sink. 

When he didn’t say anything, Jessica prompted him softly, “Dean?”

He took a deep breath and reached into sink to pull the drain plug before he turned to face her as well. “I met a hunter a few years back. Bodies were dropping in town, decapitated. With the cattle deaths, I thought it was some kind of demon or satanic cult,” Dean started to tell the story and Jessica was acutely aware of how dark it was outside, how quiet the house was, the slight chill from the cooled air coming through the vents. 

“I dug around a little more and discovered the bodies weren’t human. They were vampires and someone wasn’t cleaning up after their kills.”

She almost didn’t want to ask, but Jessica was so curious. “What do you mean by that?”

Lifting his gaze to meet hers from where he’d been glaring at the floor, Dean’s brow smoothed out and he explained, “When you’ve killed a monster, it’s best to salt and burn the body. You never know what might happen with the supernatural and you should always cover your bases. Not to mention it gets rid of evidence if the scene’s found by local law enforcement or something. This guy, he wasn’t doing any kind of cover up. He was just dropping monster bodies and walking away.” 

Dean halted his story and seemed to need a minute to get his thoughts in order, so they quickly finished loading the dishwasher, turning it on, and retreated into the living room. 

Jessica took her favorite spot in the loveseat and Dean spread out across the couch. He picked up the story again. 

“Other things weren’t adding up either,” he told Jessica, and she listened raptly sipping at her coffee. “There wasn’t any evidence of vampire kills in the town and there was no obvious explanation for the cattle deaths.”

Dean took a heavy gulp of his coffee and continued. “Long story short, I ended up in a sit down with the nest mistress.” Jessica was really tempted to ask how that came about, but since Dean had deliberately skipped over the details she figured he had reason. “Come to find, they’re vegetarian vampires or some bullshit. Only drink from animals. They were trying to set themselves up on a self-sustaining pig farm,” he explained still sounding incredulous and mildly offended even after several years. Jessica quickly took a sip of her coffee to hide her smirk. 

“So, what did you do?” she asked, composing her face into a neutral curiosity. 

A dark expression stole across Dean’s features. “I tried to talk to the other hunter, but he already knew. He knew they were harmless and he didn’t care. He’d been chasing them across the country for the last six months and refused to let them go. So,” he hesitated, before he finished, “when he tried to set another trap for them I stopped him. The vegan vampires left town and I never caught them on my radar again.”

Jessica didn’t ask what he meant by “I stopped him”. She had a feeling there was a lot more to the story and she had a feeling that Dean wasn’t going to elaborate. Whatever else had happened between him and the other hunter it hadn’t ended well, she could tell that much. 

“This guy sounds like an asshole,” she comments. 

Dean snorted into his coffee and flashed her an amused smirk. “Yeah, he was an asshole. But the point I was trying to make was that he cared more about killing the monsters than protecting the innocent. Unfortunately, I’ve met a fair few hunters like that. It’s easy to see the world in black and white when you’re hunting, but even the supernatural has shades of gray, has exceptions to the rules.” 

This was a different side she hadn’t seen of Dean yet, Jessica realized, the philosopher behind the hunter. It hadn’t really occurred to her that there were ethics issues involved in hunting. That not all supernatural things had to be bad. It was fascinating. She wanted to know more. 

“What other exceptions are there?” she asked, genuinely interested. 

And it seemed Dean genuinely didn’t mind explaining, because for the next couple of hours Jessica learned about the gray areas of the supernatural world. That rugarus could live off of raw beef. Werewolves didn’t have to eat human hearts. Witches made just as effective hunters as ordinaries did. Ghosts can foretell of dangers instead of causing them. And sometimes humans were the real villains of the story. Whether intentionally or not.

“So, these college kids just created a fully functioning murderous urban legend by spray painting some symbols on a wall?” she summed up incredulously. 

“Ugh,” Dean grimaced at the memory. “Those two idiots from the Hell Hound’s Lair website certainly didn’t help. Every time they changed the legend on their webpage the tulpa would develop a new MO.”

“How did you stop it?” Jessica asked eagerly. 

“Burnt the whole place down,” Dean answered simply, like arson was the answer to all of life’s troubles. Considering how often fire was the only way to stop whatever he was hunting that week, Jessica figured that was actually a pretty valid method of problem solving. 

Then there were the tragic endings to the sad stories. Like the blind preacher whose wife used black magic and reapers as murder weapons. Or the little girl that was poisoned by her step-mother and could only communicate through deadly fairytales. Or the brother and sister locked away in the basement by their abusive (grand)father. 

Jessica’s stomach was starting to roll and she wiped a tear from her cheek as it escaped her horrified blue eyes. 

“How do you do it, Dean?” she rasped around the lump in her throat. “How do you deal with all this evil all the time?”

A heavy warm hand landed on her knee and gave it a comforting squeeze. Glancing up from her lap she saw Dean had scooted closer and was staring at her with kind green eyes. 

“Yeah, a lot of what I do is horrible, but sometimes it’s not so bad,” he said, sounding as reassuring as possible. “Remind me to tell you about the giant alcoholic teddy bear or the shapeshifter Count Dracula sometime.”

Jessica gave a weak chuckle and nodded, rubbing under her eyes to whisk away the last traces of tears. “But not tonight,” she said. “It’s almost midnight and you still need your rest,” casting him a stern look, which he returned with an eye roll.

Giving her knee a last squeeze, Dean let her go and levered himself off the couch offering Jessica a hand up as well. “Whatever you say, Mom,” he muttered sarcasticly. 

Jessica sniffed unimpressed and pushed him in front of her down the hall toward their bedrooms. “I wouldn’t have to keep nagging you if you just did what I told you to do in the first place.”

Pausing at the door to the guest room, Dean turned a very unconvincing innocent expression on her. “But what would be the fun in that?”

Jessica leveled him with an unimpressed look and said pointedly, “Goodnight, Dean.”

Chuckling, Dean turned to his room and waved flippantly over his shoulder at her, calling, “’Night, Jessica,” as he shut the door. 

Shaking her head in reluctant amusement, Jessica turned to her own room and got ready for bed. Hopefully she would be nightmare free tonight, but somehow she doubted it. 

*

It was nice, Jessica decided, having another human being in the house. It kept the loneliness at bay, the grief was quietly ebbing away the longer her attention was taken up by nursing Dean back to health and learning about the world of the supernatural made her feel closer to Sam. The world seemed almost new to her, so moving on didn’t seem akin to a death sentence anymore. 

Dean had been sleeping in her guest room and cleaning out her fridge of a week and unfortunately, no matter how many stalling tactics Jessica employed, she was only able to get him to stay for a week and a half longer. She was lucky she got that long she knew, but it seemed to her that she wasn’t the only one that was lonely. Dean had spent the last decade or so all alone on the road facing the evils of world by himself. Maybe he liked having someone else there to share the burden with. 

And Jessica was eager to hear about anything and everything Dean was willing to tell her. The good, the bad, and the ugly, she listened to it all with an open mind, kind expression, and no judgment. 

But eventually Dean couldn’t justify staying off the road any longer and since Jessica had taken his stitches out, she couldn’t think of valid reason to keep him there. 

“Alright, this looks good,” Jessica murmured as she examined the wound on Dean’s belly. It was still red, not yet fully healed, but the new skin looked healthy and knitted together cleanly. “Do you feel any pain or tenderness when I do this?” she asked as she pressed practiced fingers around the wound and into the muscle under it. 

Dean held his breath as he felt Jessica’s cool fingers gently stroke over the skin of his belly. It had been a long time since a woman had touched him like this, but the fact that it was brother’s widow was enough to shove any straying thoughts back in the deep dark corner where they came from. 

“Maybe a little tender, but no pain,” Dean answered when Jessica glanced up at him expectantly when he didn’t respond immediately. 

She hummed and dropped her fingers from his skin. Then she took a little penlight and flashed it in his eyes one after the other, checking his pupils. When she was satisfied with that she put the buds of a stethoscope in her ears and pressed the icy cold bell to his chest. 

Hissing, Dean jerked back from the shock, but stilled when Jessica pinned him with a scolding look. Frowning petulantly, Dean straightened in his seat again, grumbling, “It’s cold,” under his breath. 

Rolling her eyes, Jessica brought the bell to her lips and breathed a couple puffs of warm air on the metal. She pressed it Dean’s chest again with a raised eyebrow, “Better?”

Tearing his gaze away from her lightly smirking lips, Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get this done.” 

Jessica listened to his heart, listened to him breath deep from his chest and his back. She tested his reflexes, his flexibility, his blood pressure, and went so far as to pull out a small meter and test his blood sugar level. Hell, she even made him get on her bathroom scale. 

“What does it matter how much I weigh?” Dean huffed as they waited for the digital numbers to stop cycling. 

“It matters,” Jessica replied sternly as she marked down the ending number in Dean’s makeshift chart with a not quite satisfied expression, “because when you collapsed on my front porch you were almost dangerously underweight.”

“What? No I wasn’t!” Dean protested. 

“Yes,” Jessica shot back, “you were. You were also suffering from extreme exhaustion, dehydration, and malnutrition. That’s mostly why you passed out the way you did. You hadn’t really lost enough blood to put you down like that under normal circumstances.” 

A dark scowl etched over Dean’s green eyes, but he couldn’t really refute that. He knew he hadn’t really been taking great care of himself, but he hadn’t realized just how bad it must have been. He hadn’t really much cared at the time, though. Even before Sammy had been killed, Dean had been battling the loneliness and the stress of being a solo hunter on the road by himself. He hadn’t been stopping in at Bobby’s or the Roadhouse nearly as often as he should, hadn’t been getting the sleep and rest he knew –but didn’t like to admit- was vital for keeping a hunter alive. 

Hopping off the scale and tugging his t-shirt back over his head, Dean was quiet while Jessica muttered to herself and finished jotting down all of his results in the chart she’d made him to track his healing progress. 

When she gave a grudging huff and flipped the folder shut, Dean dared to ask, “So, what’s the verdict, Doc. Am I gonna live?”

Jessica gave him an unimpressed scowl then her expression smoothed out and she sighed. “You’ll live. You’re not as heavy as I’d like and your blood pressure is a little high, but your wounds are healing nicely and the last two weeks of rest have done you some good.” She paused and seemed to be studying his face, his eyes very intently. 

“You’re gonna be fine, Dean,” she summed up with a softer, though almost sad expression. “As long as you get at least seven hours of sleep most nights and eat three balanced meals a day, you should be in better shape than when you came here.” 

Dean studied her in return, the tense set of her mouth, the tight look around her eyes, the stiff way she was standing. “If everything’s fine, then what’s wrong, Jessica?”

A gust of breath escaped her and she swiped a hand over her head fiddling with her ponytail with nervous fingers. “Nothing, I just-… I don’t-…” She inhaled sharply and crossed her arms over her chest with a frown. “I’m just not looking forward to the house being empty again, when you go.”

Dean felt his stomach sink and he frowned. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about the fact that when he got back on the road he was leaving his brother’s girl alone by herself, it was just that until that moment he hadn’t really taken into account what that would actually mean. Jessica wouldn’t have anyone once he was gone. And it wasn’t as though she was safe just because Dean had warded her house as best as he could. He more than anyone knew that anything could and would happen once you were touched by the supernatural. 

It took a split second of him running nightmare scenarios in his head of all the bad horrible things that could happen to her without him or Sam there for Dean to come to a decision. 

“You make it sound like you’re never gonna see me again,” Dean drawled trying to sound nonchalant. 

Jessica’s expression loosened in surprise, a flash of hope quickly buried under caution. “What do you mean?”

“How are you gonna be sure I’m getting those three meals a day unless you’re the one feeding me?” He smirked at her. “’Cause believe me, now that I know what a good cook you are, diner burgers just aren’t going to cut it like they used to for very long.” 

She met his smirk with a faux exasperated huff and a badly concealed smile. “Well, if that’s the only way I can ensure you don’t starve yourself, I expect to see you at least every couple of months. And you better be prepared for me to check you over,” she instructed with a sternly pointed finger. “If I’m not satisfied then you better have a damn good explanation ready.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything less,” Dean drawled with a softer grin as he followed Jessica’s lightened footsteps from the bathroom back to the kitchen. 

“Damn straight,” Jessica tossed back over her shoulder on her way to the fridge. “Now what do you want for dinner? I’m thinking pork chops.”

Dean set about helping Jessica prepare their dinner with a quietness inside of him he hadn’t felt in a very long time. When he’d first come into town to bid his brother farewell and avenge his death, Dean hadn’t had any intention of staying longer than it took to kill the think that killed Sam. Now, he was familiar with the contents of all the kitchen cabinets, he knew just how long the hot water lasted in the guest shower, and the exact rattling sound the back door made when the rain made the wood swell and stick when opening. Now, he knew the soothing sound of Jessica’s distracted melodic humming as she moved around the kitchen making dinner, or sat folding laundry, or tidied up the house, or got herself dressed and ready for the day behind her closed bedroom door. 

He felt a powerful surge of protectiveness crash through him at the thought of Jessica Moore Winchester being left alone and lonely in her big house without Dean there. 

“Hey, Dean, you wanna stop standing there and peel me some garlic for the salad dressing?” 

Pulled out of his thoughts, he hadn’t realized he’d been staring at her back just listening to her hum while she reasoned the pork chops and dropped them in the skillet to cook. 

“Sure,” he mumbled walking over the pantry to pull out a head of garlic and a paper towel to catch the papery skins. “How many do you want?”

“Three or four should be fine,” Jessica responded distracted as she started in on putting the aforementioned salad together. 

The kitchen fell into a quiet den of cooking clatter and Dean sat at the kitchen table working at his task letting the sound of Jessica’s renewed humming sooth something ragged and weathered inside himself. If he hadn’t already resolved to protect and watch over her, the ease and comfort he felt in that moment would have decided it for him. 

*  
TBC…


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her husband, Sam, is brutally murdered, Jessica struggles with just getting out of bed in the morning. When a mysterious stranger knocks on her door, he makes her question everything she knew about her husband, but he also gives her hope that maybe Sam didn’t leave her all alone in the world after all.

Dean has been gone for weeks now. 

Back on the road in his beast of a car with a list of self-care instructions, a cooler filled with healthy snacks she forced on him, and a promise to text at least every couple of days, to call once a week, and to come back for a visit in at least a couple months. Jessica had a hard time keeping her hands from shaking as she watched him load his brand new duffle in the trunk. It was inevitable, she knew, that Dean would leave and get back on the road. Back to saving people and hunting things, the family business, or so he’d explained to her. 

Knowing something is inevitable and watching as the last connection to her dead husband and the only company she’s had for the last few weeks getting ready to leave her were two different things. 

As it was, when Dean turned back for one last quiz on any number of safety precautions he insisted on before he could get back on the road and leave her to fend for herself, Jessica thought, “Screw it.” The look of shock on his face as she yanked him into a tight clutching hug was almost funny. If Jessica wasn’t already fighting tears from the thought of being left alone in the house she’d shared with her dead husband again. 

The long moment it took for Dean to reciprocate, to raise his arms and embrace her back was awkward, but worth it when Jessica felt, for the first time that morning since she’d woken up to Dean’s things packed and ready to go, like she could breathe. He tightened his hold on her as she let out a relieved sigh. She was sure her shirt would be wrinkled and stretched where his hands fisted the cloth white-knuckled and secure, but she didn’t care. 

She didn’t care, not when a warm feeling of security and companionship was sweeping away the cold that had settled into her bones at the thought of him leaving. 

“You’ll come back if you get injured, right?” she asked as she squeezed her eyes shut, her arms still tight and unyielding around his shoulders. “Or if you get hungry. Either one. Doesn’t matter.” 

Dean huffed a quiet laugh over her shoulder and flexed his arms around her chest. “And you’ll call if you see anything. Anything strange happens or you think something’s wrong.” 

“Yeah,” Jessica nodded jerkily against his shoulder. “You’re on my speed dial.” Speed dial number three, because she wasn’t quite ready yet to delete Sam’s cell from number two. 

“Okay,” Dean started gruffly, “enough of this chick flick moment.” He released her and gently untangled them from their almost painful hug. “I gotta hit the road, daylight’s wasting.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Jessica reluctantly let him go and surreptitiously swiped at her cheeks to make sure she wasn’t doing something embarrassing like cry. “Careful driving and hunt safely.” 

Chuckling, Dean flashed her a grin, “Pretty sure that’s an oxymoron.”

Rolling her eyes, she propped her fists on her hips. “Well, if you don’t I’ll make you nothing, but spinach and calf’s liver when you come back.” 

“You wouldn’t,” Dean gasped scandalized, but the mirth glinting in his green eyes reflected the humor in Jessica’s.

“Show up bleeding on my doorstep again and just see if I don’t,” she shot back challengingly drawing a rusty growling laugh out of Dean as he pulled the Impala’s driver’s side door open and slid in the seat. 

Slamming the door closed behind him, Dean turned the ignition over filling the quiet morning air with the thundering rumble of his Baby’s engine. Turning to look at his brother’s widow one last time, he spoke to her out the open window. 

“Thank you, Jessica,” he said with a solemn sincere expression, “for patching me up, feeding me, letting me stay and everything else.”

“No,” Jessica returned with an equally solemn, but gentle smile. “Thank you, Dean. For killing the thing that killed Sam, and for me,” she said, reaching in the window and giving his arm a squeeze, “for taking care of me, too.” 

They held each other’s dark, saddened, but at the same time relieved gazes for a long moment. Brought together by their shared –though different- love and grief for the same man and their renewed purpose in caring for each other. Then they broke their connection, Jessica stepped back from the Impala, and Dean put the car in gear and rolled away down the drive and then down the road. 

That was eight, almost nine weeks ago and since then, true to Dean’s word – and Jessica’s threats- she received a text message confirming his health and wellbeing every couple of days or so and a phone call once a week, give or take a day or two. 

Jessica wasn’t near as lonely as she had been before Dean collapsed on her welcome mat, but she couldn’t claim that her life was a barrel of excitement either. Well, a little bit of excitement. 

After about a week of the house being too quiet and dinner being too lonely, Jessica had scrolled through the names Dean made her add into her phone and memorize and made a decision. And it was one of the best decisions she’d made, because Bobby Singer was amazing. When Dean had described the cantankerous old man as a supernatural expert he hadn’t been exaggerating one bit. 

Once she’d proved who she was to the paranoid old man’s satisfaction he was more than happy to give her a hand. He supplied her with reference books and other materials, assisted her in redesigning and drawing up plans for renovating her house and property to make it as supernaturally secure as possible. And he indulged her with hilariously embarrassing stories about Sam and Dean when they were kids and would spend months on end with him at his salvage yard. 

He also didn’t mind just chatting a bit with her, listening to her stories about Sam as a grown, caring, and generous man, her worries about Dean and the dangerous life he lead, or her almost never ending questions about the new world she’d been exposed –however distantly- to. 

Jessica would forever be thankful to Bobby for his patient, kind listening ear, but more so for the help he’d given her in making her home as safe and inviting to Dean as possible. She’d started the project out of curiosity and ended up finishing it for almost the express purpose of having a safe haven for Dean to return to and stay. She knew, no matter how much she wanted him to stay, Dean would always have one foot out the door and a constant ball of tension in his gut with worry for her, if he couldn’t be absolutely sure that her home was one of the safest places against the supernatural next to Bobby Singer’s own panic room. 

The remodeling plans were finalized and Jessica had already put in some calls to contractors, so she was excited for Dean to eventually show back up on her doorstep again. She almost couldn’t wait to show him the plans and get his approval, but to also show how devoted she was to the idea that her house would become one of Dean’s very few port of calls, homes away from home, one of his safe havens. 

She’d accomplished a lot in just eight weeks if she did say so herself. 

*

Eight weeks turned into nine turned into eleven turned into almost four months and Dean still hadn’t come back. Jessica knew hunting took time, she remembered Dean’s stories of sitting around on his butt for the right phase of the moon or turn of an equinox or whatever, so truly she wouldn’t have been so worried. If only the phone calls and texts hadn’t stopped three weeks ago. 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jessica was worrying herself sick that Dean was dead in a ditch somewhere. Torn apart by a skinwalker or eaten by a pagan god or possessed by a demon, she didn’t know and she tried not to think about it. She mostly failed at that. 

She had nightmares. Ever since Sam had died and Dean had shown up on her door step. They used to be fairly simple. Sam would be attacked by a shadow creature and torn apart while he screamed for Jessica to help save him. Now that she knew what had really killed her husband, that she knew what really went bump in the night, her nightmares got worse. Sam would reach for her frantically as a tree god ate his intestines, he’d show up at her door with black eyes and an evil smile, he’d stand on the sidewalk staring sightlessly while a ghostly hand reached into his chest and tore his heart out. She’d always wake up with a gasp, a shout, a yelp of shock and there wouldn’t be anyone to sooth her fear or tell her it was all a horrible dream. 

They used to be fairly simple. She hadn’t heard from Dean in almost a month and Jessica’s nightmares took a turn. 

It would start with Sam getting jumped by a Lon Chaney Jr.–esque werewolf, but after the first horrific rending of flesh Sam’s terrified face would morph into Dean’s and it would end with Dean dead and torn apart with his heart missing in Sam’s place. 

This new and awful turn to her nightmares made them probably worse than the ones with just Sam. Jessica had already lost Sam, she was familiar with that terrible grief. But Dean was another matter. He’d come to her when she most needed him and even though she’d patched him up on her living room floor with his blood smeared up to her elbows there was just something about him that seemed invincible. The thought that he was dead out there somewhere and she was once again alone in the world, made Jessica’s heart pound in her chest and her stomach sink into her shoes. It was almost unfathomable that he would leave her just like Sam did. 

Almost unfathomable, but Jessica was a nurse and a realist. She knew just how dangerous Dean’s job was. She’d stitched his injuries after he’d killed the werewolf that killed Sam. No matter how much she wanted to deny it she knew there was a very good possibility that Dean wasn’t in contact because he was in trouble if not dead. And he would have to be to break his promise of communicating with her. Jessica hadn’t known him for more than seventy-two hours before she knew that when Dean made a promise he meant to keep it. 

Which was why one Thursday night, after almost four weeks without word from him, Jessica was sitting in her living room staring at her phone debating whether she should give Dean another day or if she should just call Bobby and demand he mount a search. She already tried calling Dean herself, at least twice a day for the past week and all she’d gotten was straight to voicemail. 

“ _Hey, you’ve reached Dean’s other-other cell. If you’re calling this number it better be an emergency because-_ ”

Hissing in frustration Jessica hit “end” before the message finished and tossed her cell onto the coffee table in frustration. That was the third time she’s called him today, once in the morning before breakfast, once on her lunch break, and now it was nearing 9:30 at night and he still had yet to either pick up the phone or return her calls. She’d tried to tell herself she was over reacting, but the prospect of once again being completely alone in the world was making her panic a little bit. 

“Screw it,” Jessica muttered to the empty room. “I’m calling Bobby.” Reaching for her cell once again, she’d just brushed the dark screen with her fingers when there was a loud knock on her front door.

Startling at the sudden sound, Jessica pressed a hand to her skipping heart for a second until it steadied again. It was too late for a surprise visitor, or a delivery, or Mrs. Havisham from down the street being nosey, Jessica thought. The last time someone had knocked on her door this late at night, she’d ended up dragging her bleeding long lost brother-in-law into her living room. 

A flare of hope lit up inside of her and Jessica jumped up from the couch and darted toward the front door, skidding in her socks on the hardwood floor. 

Reaching the entranceway Jessica hurriedly snapped the porch light on and peeked through the window at the top of the door. The sight on the other side had her heaving a deep breath of relief. Then a wave of anger rose inside her as all the worry and fear of the past few weeks ebbed away. 

Twisting the deadbolt unlocked, Jessica pulled open her front door and fixed the figure standing on her new welcome mat with a stern scowl. 

The silence hung over them. Jessica with her arms crossed over his chest and an unimpressed expression on her face and Dean with a tired sheepish smirk that quickly started to fade under the heat of her look. 

After a long awkward moment, Dean finally sighed in defeat. “Alright, look. I know I told you I’d call, but there was this rugaru and my phone dropped in the swamp. Then before I could get another one I caught a ghost at the state line and by the time I’d salted and burned it I was only about three hours out and I figured it wasn’t worth it to go buy a phone when I was already so close. Thought you might appreciate seeing me with your own eyes after so long, anyhow.”

All through Dean’s long rambled explanation, Jessica had been studying him. She saw the purpling bruise on his jaw, the raw scrapes on his knuckles, the exhausted circles under his eyes –not as dark as when they’d first met, but darker than when they’d parted-, and the suspicious stains on his dirty weather-beaten clothes. 

By the time he’d finished, Jessica was still angry, but she was also so, so relieved. Sure he could have taken the hour to hunt down a replacement phone to give her a call, but he could have just as easily died in a muggy swamp or in a decrepit graveyard as well. And Dean was right about one thing, she did appreciate seeing him with her own eyes, seeing that he was in fact still alive and breathing. 

For the second time that evening Jessica thought, “Screw it,” and went with her instincts. 

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and yanked him to her in a hard unyielding grip. Pressing her body against his she buried her face in his neck and took a deep slightly shaky breath. He didn’t smell all that pleasant, sweat and dirt and things still clinging to his clothes and skin, but he was warm and there was no denying the jolt of his chest against hers when he let out a surprised grunt. 

“I’m still angry at you,” Jessica mumbled into his collar as she curled her fists in the back of his shirts. “But I’m so happy you’re not dead.”

Dean’s tension eased out of his body and he finally wrapped his own arms around Jessica, squeezing her tight to his chest and taking comfort in the feel of her heart beating against his. 

“I’m alright, Jessica,” he murmured as he pressed his nose into her shoulder and took a silent inhale of her scent, fading perfume and detergent and the natural smell of her. “Sorry I worried you.”

Scoffing, Jessica gently knocked her head against his jaw in punishment. “And you should be. I have half a mind to feed you liver and spinach for all the worrying I did for you.” 

“No,” Dean whined and lifted his head to give Jessica a beseeching look as she pulled back from their hug. “Don’t do that. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

She gave him an unimpressed hum as she scrutinized his pleading expression. Stepping back, she dropped her arms from his shoulders and put her fists on her hips. “Fine. No liver, but,” she pointed a stern finger at him, “you’re not getting out of the spinach.” 

Dean flashed her a grin. “I can live with that.” 

Rolling her eyes, Jessica snatched up his hand, hissed unhappily at the scrapes across his skin and pulled him off the welcome mat and over the threshold. He barely had time to grab his duffle from the ground near his feet before the door slammed behind him. 

“Come on, I have a couple chicken breasts in the fridge. You go take a shower, while I go get dinner ready.” She cast him a look over shoulder as she towed him through the house and shoved him toward the guest bathroom. “I’m assuming there wasn’t time to bathe between the rugaru and the ghost,” she commented dryly.

Huffing a laugh, Dean nodded his head conceding. “Barely had time to breathe, much less find a motel to clean up in.” 

Jessica paused, and turned to look at him fully, her blue eyes softer and her slight smile genuine. “I really am glad you’re okay, Dean. I don’t-” she swallowed thickly and averted her eyes for a moment before looking back at him with sadness and worry in her gaze. “I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t come back.” 

Turning his hand over in hers, Dean twined their fingers together and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “It’ll take a hell of a lot more than that to keep me from coming back to you, Jessica. I promise I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” 

Sucking in a shuddering breath, Jessica held his dark determined green eyes and nodded, finally letting go of the last edges of tension still clinging inside her. She knew this was a promise Dean was going keep, come hell or high water, she knew Dean would fight like crazy to come back to her. 

Releasing her hold of Dean’s hand, their fingers slowly slipped away from each other. Jessica pushed him by the shoulder toward the bathroom again, her mood and her expression lightening once more. “Now go get in the shower,” she ordered smirking at him. “You stink.” 

Chuckling, Dean put up no protest and good naturedly followed her prodding, trudging down the hall. As he got to the bathroom door he paused and looked back to see Jessica still standing at the end of the hallway watching him with a light, happy smile on her face before she turned and started into the kitchen. 

Not for the first time, Dean thought how beautiful she was. An old, almost forgotten feeling started to well up inside him. It pulled at the deeply buried memories from his childhood. Standing the cool house, the smell of dinner just starting to waft through the air, the sound of her absent humming, and the scent of her perfume still clinging to him, Dean knew what that feeling was. 

Home, he felt like he was home. 

*  
End.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [We're Still Here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27866269) by [Witty_Name_Here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Witty_Name_Here/pseuds/Witty_Name_Here)




End file.
